


Badlands Howl

by Dr_Supernova_Dragon_Cat



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Smut, Well-Earned Happy Ending, halloween fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:27:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26777353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Supernova_Dragon_Cat/pseuds/Dr_Supernova_Dragon_Cat
Summary: On a gray Halloween day, Sansa travels alone across South Dakota and finds herself inexplicably drawn to the Badlands for what was supposed to be a brief stop. A park ranger tells her a tale befitting All Hallows’ Eve about the Badlands rider—a restless spirit who haunts the land astride his black horse, his face half-burned from hellfire and his unearthly howl famed for the misfortune it brings.Despite the frightening tale, Sansa finds herself enchanted and, amongst the Badlands’s haunting austerity and bewitching wonder, she encounters the Badlands rider and far more than she ever could have bargained for.Spooky, sexy, sad, sweet, and spiritual. A Halloween fic inspired by Betty Jiang’s artwork, “Nightstalker.”Listen to Badlands Howl on SoundCloud!Check out the Badlands Howl playlist on Spotify!
Relationships: Sandor Clegane/Sansa Stark
Comments: 202
Kudos: 243





	1. Lore

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maroucia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maroucia/gifts).



> Happy (early) birthday to Maroucia! This fic is dedicated to you, my fellow skeleton-loving, phantasmagorical friend! You are a treasure and a muse! 
> 
> This is a little story that popped into my head over the summer when Maroucia and I were chatting about the artwork “Nightstalker” by Betty Jiang (featured in this chapter’s picset) and ghostly cowboy Sandor. 
> 
> This story is short, but jam packed with my favorite things—smut, angst, fluff, and spookiness fit for the Halloween season! 
> 
> I am also excited to announce that this is the first fic that I have recorded! [ You can listen to this chapter on SoundCloud!](https://soundcloud.com/user-656219666/badlands-howl-lore)

“I really wish you’d stay somewhere for the night.”

Worry weighed her mother’s voice down, deepening the tones and suffusing it with a hush. Sansa tugged at the sweater that’d fallen off her shoulder. Oversized and gray, it was the kind of thing to curl up in, perhaps not the savviest choice for the drive back to Omaha.

“I know,” she replied. With the engine killed, the inside of the car held a vacuous quality and the wind rocked it with gentle persistence.

“I just don’t like you driving out there after dark.”

The follow-on wasn’t meant to nag, Sansa knew. It was a call to reason. The drive from Billings to Omaha was relatively uneventful; a straight shot of flat highway, only treacherous in the winter when ice glazed the road or snow fell in thick blankets. Nightfall only meant keeping an eye out for wildlife bounding across the dimly lit highway.

“I know,” Sansa insisted again on a laugh that had little to do with actual humor, but she hoped it’d be a talisman against frustration. She had left her childhood home in odd form and in a haunted mood that had no explanation.

“Look, I’m already halfway to Omaha, so there’s no sense in stopping for the night now and, if I stopped at sundown, I’d only be three hours away from home, which makes even less sense.”

Her mother hummed at Sansa’s logic, a short and resonant sound that said she didn’t agree but wouldn’t push it. Sansa was an adult—adult enough to have a desk job in Nebraska, one that paid her bills and offered an occasional luxury; adult enough to own her home and stake her claim in the mundane. She had friends. She had independence. She had family. What more did she need?

“Well, where are you now?”

The question came as Rickon and Bran playfully bickered in the background. The ruckus faded and silence remained, the blank space for Sansa to insert an answer.

It was complicated, and she stared out the windshield at a stone slab announcing, “Badlands National Park.” The visitor lot was mostly empty; just a coach bus parked at the far end and a few out-of-state vehicles in between.

“A rest stop,” Sansa lied and couldn’t say why; perhaps the same reason she ended up here in the first place, though she didn’t know how to put that into words either. She let the fib live on but diluted it with a bit of truth, so it’d go down easier. “I just need to stretch my legs for a bit and then I’ll get back on the road.”

Her legs were fine. She’d been on the road for six hours and stopped for lunch and coffee around noon. By some peculiar paradox, the open road did little to tame her thoughts that boxed her in, claustrophobia of her own making.

_I just need space,_ she’d deduced, but it seemed ridiculous. She was all alone and driving on a wide-open road back to an empty house. The lonely existence gnawed at her.

Her engagement had ended in the spring, and it started like a tickle then. That tickle became an itch she couldn’t reach, something that just couldn’t be satisfied, and it grew into what felt like scratching from within; the indelible desire to be freed from some invisible cage she’d been living in. Sansa didn’t know what it was or why it appeared. As the seasons changed with summer fading into autumn, the restlessness hadn’t decayed, but seemed to come alive.

“Please be careful and call me when you get home,” her mother said, and Sansa accepted the guilt for having lied.

The truth bubbled up at the back of her throat, but it wasn’t so simple as telling her mother where she was. That was only the beginning. The “why” of it all eluded her. _Why are you here and where are you going?_

She didn’t have the answers. “I will, momma. I love you.”

“I love you too, sweetheart.” Sadness clipped her mother’s words before she hung up.

She knew. Somehow her mother always knew.

It wasn’t by accident that just the other day her mom had unearthed a memory from Sansa’s childhood; the time she fell off her bike and broke her arm. Two neighborhoods away and down an overgrown path weaving into the woods, she’d cried on rain-soaked earth and accepted her fate—she’d die out in the wilderness. Of course, that never came to pass. Her mother’s car, with its rattling engine, sounded in the distance and she’d called Sansa’s name. She found her down the path, plucked her from the dirt, and all was right in the world.

_“How did you know?”_ Sansa had asked when her mom reminded her of the story. At the kitchen table, they drank coffee together and laughed about the past. Her mother’s merriment had died with the question.

_“A mother knows,”_ was all she said and brought her mug to her lips, but her eyes said it all. She knew.

Sansa had come back home not quite herself. A shadow had fallen over her. She didn’t know when it happened, but knew the light was dimmer. It felt like waiting for a cloud to pass. It wasn’t sadness, but, whatever _it_ was, it came like a gathering storm. It left her restless and waiting, as if her soul was pacing her body. _I just need space._

What bothered her the most was the assumption that it was bitterness. Robb’s wedding had been beautiful, the kind of elegant charm only his new wife could pull off. Beneath a canopy of trees all shedding their colorful leaves, they’d wed around dusk. With crisp air and fresh linens, it was quaint despite an expansive guest list. The warmth of family and friends gathering in Montana on the Stark family ranch melded the duality and bound it together—elegance and intimacy; the rustic and the extravagant.

In a champagne-color dress, Sansa ate buttercream cake at the end of the wedding party table while couples crowded the dance floor. Busy bodies decided it was a sad sight—a pretty girl in a tailored dress, sitting all alone and stuffing her face with cake as lovers swayed to tender songs.

_“You’re next,”_ a litany of her relatives and complete strangers from the bride’s side of the family consoled Sansa. She’d found herself planted at the center of an unwelcome and uncalled for receiving line. They’d give an exaggerated wink or a gentle nudge with their elbow, and that would be the end of their sympathy. They’d done their part to comfort the sad sack and could carry on celebrating the happy couple.

Sansa had smiled graciously enough but, halfway through her second slice of cake, was out of smiles and would instead point out that she’d come alone to the wedding. No date usually meant no boyfriend and that meant no fiancés, and husbands didn’t just manifest from the ether. She was fine on her own and wasn’t so consumed by the catastrophic end of her own engagement that she couldn’t celebrate her brother and his new wife. She was fine.

To prove them wrong, Sansa had abandoned the cake and made for the dance floor. When slow songs came on, she danced with Rickon and put on a dazzling smile. Her mother had watched with interest, but she knew what roiled beneath because apparently mothers always knew.

She’d asked about it this morning, and Sansa didn’t know how to tell her mother she was haunted by something. It crept in at the corners and came alive at night. Bizarre dreams robbed her of restful sleep. Back lit in emerald green, shadows gathered on the edges of strange visions.

This morning, Sansa had been thoroughly exhausted when daylight broke and painted her childhood bedroom in dawn’s pastel hues. Wrapped in that light, she fell asleep and embraced the peace it finally brought. That sweet sleep meant getting on the road three hours later than she intended. Sansa had said her goodbyes to her parents and her siblings. Her mother always went misty-eyed at that part.

_“I’ll be home in less than a month for Thanksgiving,”_ Sansa had said, and it did enough to get her out the door. With a piece of buttered toast between her teeth and a banana in her purse, she’d waved goodbye and honked three times—I. Love. You.

Sansa gathered up her bag now and peeked inside to the banana in an abysmal state—mashed on one end, blackened on the other, and leeching an aromatic scent that wouldn’t have been bad except her wallet was now sticky. She plucked out the banana and climbed from her car.

The wind had calmed, and Sansa stared across the parking lot to the craggy formation of earth rippling towards a muted gray sky. The sun triumphed somewhere behind thin overcast clouds. Light filtered through, enough that Sansa squinted against it, but it came like a haze that seemed faintly fluorescent in the grotesque way it fell over the arid surroundings. Over the oppressive scent of the banana, the air smelled distinctly earthen, like warm rock and dried grass.

She’d been here before—on school trips and the years her family couldn’t afford a vacation much beyond the plains or the mountains. As it stood, national parks were far more cost effective at entertaining a brood of children; certainly more so than packing up the family and heading towards Colorado Springs.

Her memories of this place were sterile, matter of fact, soulless. She could faintly remember objectively acknowledging the beauty, but never regarded the Badlands with awestruck and reticent fascination like others. She chalked it up to familiarity. The Omaha natives ooh’ed and ahh’ed at Sansa’s upbringing as if living amongst changes in elevation was something sacred. To them, the wild wonder of the west enticed with myth and mystery. To Sansa, it was just home.

As she crossed the parking lot with wobbly legs that needed stretching after all, a chill moved through her, as close as she might ever come to understanding the reverie paid here. It slowed her steps and, when a gust of wind swept up around her and lifted her long hair on the breeze, it was enough to root her in place and she closed her eyes by some foreign instinct.

Sansa drank in the sensation—chilly wind seeping through her sweater and vague enchantment. When she opened her eyes again, a presence had joined her. The hair on her arms stood on end and she spun around, certain she’d find another visitor loitering too close.

Empty. No one was behind her. Only that rock formation that looked ancient now that she studied it. The land knew things. It witnessed both the horror of man—the savage fight over the ground beneath her feet—and the artifacts of the unknown realm the rolled with the breeze. If the earth was a corporal vessel, then the wind was its spirit, and it spoke in ways she’d never noticed before.

Sansa cast the odd observation away but carried its ghost inside the visitor center where the memory rang with the bell that announced her presence. She tossed the banana in the trash.

“Hi there!” a park ranger chirped behind the front desk. An older man, probably her father’s age, he flashed a chip-toothed smile beneath a lopsided mustache. In a neatly pressed sage green shirt and olive drab tie, he pressed his palms on the counter and paid Sansa his undivided attention.

She returned it with a flustered smile and breathed a “hi” paired with an awkward wave. The light inside was dim and didn’t reach the far end of the lobby where a pamphlet display sat in the corner.

“What can I help you with?” the ranger asked and drummed his fingers against the counter. He stared at her expectantly. Once more, the “why” landed at her feet and, though he was a complete stranger, she didn’t have an answer for him either.

Sansa gripped the straps of her purse and sweetened the smile on her lips.

“No, I’m just looking,” she dismissed as polite as she could and with the same “thanks but no thanks” nonchalance as browsing racks at a clothing store.

Her eyes swept to a faded sign that gently encouraged visitors to support the national parks with an annual pass and listed the myriad of benefits to doing so.

“Well, I guess I just need a day pass,” Sansa said and approached the counter as she dug for her wallet that still smelled of banana and was stained now too. She frowned at its sullied state and paused a moment. “Actually, I’ll take the annual pass.”

The ranger’s manners turned effusive then with warm thanks and enthusiastic praise of how this was one thing the country got right—preserving the natural beauty with the parks. Sansa nodded. She didn’t know when or if she’d ever be back, but it was a small price to pay to make someone else’s day.

The ranger fussed with the cash register and handed back her credit card and a decal to put in her windshield.

“If you’re interested in setting up a tour or need some directions around the park, just let us know.” He prodded the maps encased beneath the front desk’s clear plastic cover. “This road will take you to the lookouts. They’re great for photographs. We just ask that you don’t interact with the wildlife and that you stay on the road. Too many people wander off for a better view and get into trouble. Given it’s our off season, we don’t have as many rangers patrolling, so it’s especially important now.”

Sansa followed his finger that traced a vein across the map and didn’t bother to ask what wildlife he meant or what sort of trouble he expected she might find out there. On either account, she didn’t have a habit of approaching things best left alone, so she nodded with a smile and tucked her wallet into her purse.

“Oh, and happy Halloween,” the ranger added just as Sansa turned away from the counter.

She stopped, settled for a moment on her feet, and turned around again with her brows drawn together.

“What?” she asked, though she’d heard him just fine. Halloween wasn’t a word easily mistaken for something else. It stood alone in that regard as it very well should, she supposed.

“Halloween,” the ranger repeated with odd bewitchment that drew his voice to just above a whisper. “Today is Halloween.”

Sansa normally wasn’t this slow on the uptake and only now did she notice the small black-and-orange striped bowl filled with lollipops that’d seen better days. Half were split down the middle and the others were rendered to sugar rock and dust. If she were a betting woman, she’d place her money on those lollipops having been from last year and dug out from beneath a pile of other crap—Christmas decorations or the like—dusted off and set out to go mostly untouched for another year.

“Thank you,” Sansa replied as her senses now registered eerie music—the otherworldly wail of a theremin—seeping from an unseen speaker. “You as well.” 

Of course, it was Halloween. During her time at home, Rickon hadn’t stopped talking about his costume or strategy to canvas the neighborhood for the best candy haul. Bran had been incessant too, but his fixation manifested on studiously relaying bizarre details about Halloween’s more supernatural aspects. Sansa had humored them both.

Lost in a fog that hadn’t yet lifted, she had lost track of the time and the days bled into one another. Halloween was just another in a long procession, marked only by night stealing more sun. She gathered up a map from the counter to busy her hands and smiled again before departing.

She meant to retrace her steps out to the parking lot but stopped short of pushing through the door. Through the glass, she watched the wind kick up plumes of dirt outside. A hollowness descended on her and she backed away.

“Are you alright?” the ranger implored, and Sansa answered with a nod, but spun around towards the lobby again.

_What am I doing?_

Her eyes drifted to a clock on the wall. She didn’t have the time, only an abundance of curiosity that blindsided her now. She scanned the lobby and stood at a crossroads with the gift shop on her right and a museum exhibit on her left. She made for the latter—a quiet and darkened space with thoughtfully curated displays of fossils and bits of Badlands history. The stagnant air was musty, and a babbling fountain in the far corner infused the small space with a faintly chlorinated smell.

Sansa mindlessly absorbed stray bits of information as she passed exhibits with waning interest. She didn’t care to learn about bison or the flora she might encounter if it were spring or summer. Her feet moved with purpose and she didn’t know what. She slowed as she caught up to a group of tourists, probably the ones who’d spilled out of the coach bus outside. Though they were only a dozen, all were older couples who listened in rapt to a tour guide and crowded around something—a painting that Sansa couldn’t quite see.

Unlike the other exhibits, this wasn’t a permanent fixture, but had instead been placed on an easel and obviously hauled out for only a short while. The guide spoke quiet enough that Sansa only caught every third word of his spiel. Where she might’ve—and should’ve—scooted around the crowd, her interest in time fell away so suddenly that it disturbed her, and she yet again asked herself what she was doing here.

Why did she stop at a national park of all places? Why was she still standing here, easing forward, close enough that an old woman shot her a mildly offended look? And why was she battling an odd instinct to shoulder her way to the front and see with her own eyes what had captured the collective attention in the room and imparted solemn dread?

The tour guide finished, and the crowd fell deathly silent. They exchanged unnerved glances with one another before quietly and quickly moving on. When they cleared away, Sansa became acutely aware that she was alone in here. Not even the din of the lobby could be heard. She stepped forward to what had inspired such a grim response from the others.

An ornate, gold-finished frame was oddly matched to the painting contained within its borders. The image it depicted was frightening but spellbinding in the way the mottled gray and eerie green captured the image of a man on horseback. Behind him, a turbulent sky roiled with an impending storm and sat in bleak contrast to emerald-washed earth, not so different from the phantasmal colors that imbued Sansa’s dreams.

The man was well-put together, large and strong and bulky with defined muscle. A cowboy in tattered clothes that’d known the elements, he gripped a rifle in one hand and held onto the reins with the other. Astride a great black horse, he turned towards the viewer and, though he was painted in mostly shadows, his face was masculine with strong features and sharp angles. From beneath his hat, long jet-black hair fell to the center of his back. If it weren’t for his eyes, Sansa might’ve immediately noticed the scars marring half his face, but those eyes…

They peered from the canvas with burning intensity, literal in the way they’d been painted so sinister and with a silver sheen piercing through. The eyes of his horse—black and muscular and rendered with horrific likeliness to a fiend from hell—held the same quality, but Sansa couldn’t rip her gaze from the man.

A chill spilled down her spine and her mouth went dry. Sansa backed away, only now registering her quickened breaths. With another step backwards, she collided into a solid mass and expelled a sharp gasp as she spun around.

An old man let out an _oof_ , but ultimately smiled. Like the ranger at the front desk, he wore an olive drab shirt, though his entire visage was decidedly more disheveled with deep wrinkles in his clothing and a crooked tie. The thinning white wisps of his hair were in disarray too, but he smoothed the strands down with an age-spotted hand and fixed pale blue eyes on Sansa.

“You miss him?” he asked and tipped his head to the painting.

Sansa stared at the old man, long enough to toil over the question that seemed rather odd. Her eyes shifted to his name tag. Lou.

She cleared her throat and tilted her head. “Excuse me?”

“The tour,” Lou chuckled and shuffled closer to the easel. “Did you miss the guide telling his story?”

He jabbed one crooked finger towards the man in the painting and seized the opportunity to study it. Bent at the waist, he leaned forward slightly, and his gaze fell upon it through narrowed eyes.

“Oh.” Sansa released a sigh, one deep calming breath. “Yeah, I couldn’t hear from back here.”

Lou stood upright and lifted one brow. “I’ve worked here thirty-three years now,” he told her with pride that puffed out his chest and straightened his spine as much as age would allow. “I know a bit of the lore if you want to hear it from an old bag of bones like me.”

“Of course,” Sansa accepted politely. “If you have time, that is.”

Lou laughed again, and spittle gathered at the corner of his mouth. He wiped it away with a tatty handkerchief from his back pocket. “I’ve got nothing but time these days. My name’s Lou.”

He tapped his name badge but didn’t offer his hand with his introduction. Instead, his thumbs hooked on his belt loops as he eased towards the painting. 

“Sansa,” she replied and mimicked his movements, shuffling closer to the easel. The painting drew her undivided attention as macabre fascination took hold.

“We only display this painting around this time of year, mostly because the story attached to it is befitting All Hallows’ Eve.” Lou paused for a moment and shifted a tentative glance to her. He seemed unsettled on his feet as he continued. “Strange time of year. The nights grow longer and the winds that blow over the Badlands chillier. You know what they say about Halloween?”

Sansa had heard plenty about Halloween from Bran but shook her head because she didn’t quite know which path Lou was heading down—the hokey or the hallowed. When he spoke again, his voice had gone hoarse and quiet, and the somber way he regarded the painting with fearsome reverence said it was the latter path he’d take.

“The veil between the living and the dead grows thinnest,” he remarked. “Tonight, we are betwixt and between and some say the Badlands themselves are a liminal space—a place that exists in the shadow realm, perpetually neither here nor there. Some believe that because of that quality, the Badlands attract restless spirits. They drift across the open land and, when the moon is full, you can gaze across the desolate terrain and see those ghosts and ghouls wandering endlessly in search of the lives they lost.” 

Though a chill had now settled beneath her skin, Sansa cracked a dubious smile at Lou’s dramatic explanation of Halloween’s significance. She gazed at him and Lou had apparently noticed her incredulity. His lips pressed together in a thin line, not quite a scowl, but the displeasure was clear.

“What?” he pressed. “You don’t believe in an afterlife?”

“An afterlife, sure,” Sansa countered, her skepticism on full display. “But ghosts? I don’t know about all that.”

Lou eyed her with suspicion; not the kind that was a prelude to proselytizing the paranormal. He looked at her as if she’d just argued against an indisputable fact and clung to subterfuge that even a fool knew was a sham.

Sansa ignored him and pointed to the painting. “Who is he?” she asked, if only to be polite, though the curiosity surged in her as soon as the question departed her lips.

As mesmerized as Sansa was with the painting, Lou appeared equally unsettled and she wondered why he even offered to tell her the story if it disturbed him this way. He drew a quiet breath before speaking on a tremulous voice.

“A spirit, dark and sinister, who haunts the land.” He looked to Sansa with a plea behind his eyes for her to believe. “I’ve seen him myself.” 

She felt her brows pull together and an icy blast of air enveloped her, enough that Sansa looked up to the ceiling, certain she’d find an air vent or some other source. There was nothing to be found.

“You’ve seen him?” She wrapped her arms tight over her chest and her palms curled around the loose ends of her sweater sleeves.

Lou responded with a grim nod and his face went ashen. “I swear on the grave.”

The cynical part of her cautioned that this was just a tall tale told to gullible tourists to generate revenue during the off-season. The park hauled out some dusty old painting commissioned by an artist to fit a contrived tale about a fiend that purportedly haunted the land.

That didn’t explain the shift in Lou’s demeanor from jovial to troubled, and Sansa knew what that shift felt like; the way it took hold and didn’t let go; how it hounded by night, stealing sleep and invading dreams. She knew what it meant and had lived it too.

“What’s his story then?” she asked, and only now would Lou tell her. He looked at her and must’ve seen the change in her too, the willingness to believe.

“It starts long ago when times were harsh and winters brutal. Sickness swept across the open plains, leaving a trail of death and misery behind. A nearby settlement was no exception. It suffered hardships just like any other prairie town. The winter of 1847 decimated the settlement when consumption tore through. Children perished in the arms of their mothers. Men laid their wives to rest. Daughters buried fathers. Fathers buried sons. When the snow and ice thawed and winter yielded to spring, the town didn’t wake, and travelers happened upon nature’s carnage. Not a single soul had survived the winter.”

Lou inched even nearer to the easel and, as he closed the distance, his voice fell to just above a whisper again.

“And that brings us to him—the most notorious ghoul who haunts this land. The Badlands rider.”

He had a name—or a moniker, at least—and it was enough to make him real. Transfixed, Sansa couldn’t tear her eyes away from the rider’s steely gaze and his eyes that seemed to dance now with spectral fire; a trick of the light, perhaps, though the room seemed to darken and grew colder too.

“Badlands rider,” Sansa repeated, bewitched and distracted and her voice issued thin from her mouth. “What happened to him?”

“Well, the town was set to flame to prevent disease from spreading after the thaw. The records were lost, so it’s anyone’s guess. Most believe he was one of the unfortunate souls who perished that winter. Some say he was the town’s last survivor and the horror of death, disease, and famine drove him to insanity. He left his homestead one bitter cold night and rode across the Badlands on his great black horse towards the nearest town but didn’t survive.

“Legend has it the Badlands rider roams the land by horseback, just as tortured with grief and insanity in death as he was in life. Those who’ve seen his face and lived to tell the tale describe a gruesome sight. His eyes glow with night shine in phantom light. His teeth are those of a beast, sharpened to feast on human flesh. Half his face is a burned and mangled ruin. Many believe that after his soul was turned away from heaven’s gate, the rider was singed in hellfire, but even the devil himself wouldn’t keep him. So, the Badlands rider is doomed to drift in endless purgatory.

“At midnight, folks hear the rider screaming out his misery with unearthly sounds that can drive the living to madness. The Badlands howl, it’s called. The rider then collects their soul and they too are damned. Either way, the Badlands howl brings terrible luck to those who hear it. Most are struck down by a series of misfortune—accidents, illness, sure death in one way or another.”

By the time Lou finished, goosebumps had laid siege to Sansa’s skin and her fingers trembled as she fiddled with the strap of her purse. The story was vivid in her mind’s eye—the cold bite of winter on her lips; the horrific cry of agony; the desperation of those who might’ve encountered the rider. She swallowed hard and meant to praise Lou’s storytelling, but the words stuck in her throat and came out clumsy.

“That’s quite a tale,” was all she cobbled together, but her eyes drifted back to the painting and the Badlands rider.

He beckoned her in some sinister way and diminished Sansa’s will to keep to her schedule and depart. Time seemed a construct now more than ever, lost minutes might as well have been lost years and she didn’t care to suss out the distinction.

“For someone who doesn’t believe in ghosts, you sure look scared,” Lou observed with pointed recognition of what had swept over her.

Sansa felt an embarrassed heat hit her cheeks, and the warmth brought her back to life again, it seemed. 

“Thank you for sharing that with me,” she said on a sigh and purposefully turned her back to the painting lest it sink its claws in her again. “I think I’ll get some fresh air.”

Lou tipped an invisible hat to her and his wrinkled lips curled in a genial smile. “Enjoy the park, ma’am, and beware the Badlands rider.”

“Thanks,” Sansa laughed and scooted around the easel. “I’ll try to avoid him if I can.”

She hurried down the darkened corridor past a Native American display, but Lou hollered after her.

“If I may, try to be out of the park by sunset.”

Afterthoughts scarcely carried the gravitas of his statement. It wasn’t a throwaway. It wasn’t him being cheeky or entertaining himself by scaring tourists. Sansa stopped and that bone-crushing cold came over her again. She turned slow on her heel and hoped she’d find Lou flashing a mischievous smile. Instead, his face was somber.

“Why sunset?” she asked.

“Folk can get lost in the between spaces,” he cautioned and eased towards her in deliberate, but careful steps. “Halloween, sunset, the Badlands—that’s about as in between as you’ll ever find. This land has a past. Best that you not get caught up in it, Sansa.”

She stilled and settled back on her heels. She didn’t know what sat more unsettling with her—the dire warning he just issued or the familiarity with how he said her name. She didn’t stick around to hear any more or ask questions. Sansa breezed down the corridor without a parting word or even a smile.

She hurried through the lobby and mumbled a “thank you” only when the park ranger asked if everything was alright. Sansa didn’t linger long enough to explain that their resident veteran was awfully presumptuous and strange. When she burst through the glass doors and outside again, it seemed the spell was broken, and Sansa sunk against her car where she regained her composure.

_It’s just a story._

A story told by a bored old man. A story meant to scare visitors. A story that had somehow crawled beneath her skin that still prickled with goosebumps. A story that burrowed somewhere inside of her because, as she pulled onto the road that looped around the park, Sansa carried the tale with her and tried to shake it off with some music, but to no avail.

If she needed distraction, she’d come to the right place and perhaps that was the whole point of her being here. The two-lane road that snaked deep into the park was empty, and the terrain that rippled from the earth’s hold was unlike any place she’d seen—alien in its austerity and mesmerizing in its beauty. She hadn’t remembered this part. Perhaps she’d never taken the time to appreciate it.

The rock formations reached towards an overcast sky and, even in the gauzy light permeating through the clouds, the colors stunned in stratified coral, taupe, and gray. It looked like God himself reached from the clouds to sculpt the rocks in craggy mounds and paint them in watercolors. Tall sage grass swayed in gentle response to the wind. Eager to be amongst the beauty, Sansa pulled off at the first overlook. She left her car in the lot and trekked the short distance down a plank-paved trail.

The view was panoramic, surrounded on three sides by rippling rock formations stretching as far as she could see and meeting the muted sky. She stood at the end of the walkway and let the quiet wash over her. She relished the cool breeze seeping beneath her sweater and the thin leggings she wore. Sansa closed her eyes and listened, soaking it all in and letting it percolate through her being.

She understood now what Lou meant about the Badlands being a liminal space. The ancient wonder of this place could be felt on the breeze and the earth awash in natural hues that still seemed otherworldly and apparitional in their formation. There was something distinctly ethereal here and made more apparent without intervention from others. She stood alone and still felt like an interloper to a spiritual communion she couldn’t see but sensed all around her. It observed her just as thoroughly as she surveyed the sight before her. Sansa was amongst its dominion and honored what needed to be left alone.

She quietly departed the overlook and returned to her car and then the road, but the feeling of being watched only grew as she eased deeper into the park. It seemed something stood sentry here and whispered on the wind to mark her arrival at another overlook down the road.

Where the previous one had overwhelmed with exquisite and foreign rock formations, this overlook held just as much wonder but for its eerie desolation. Wide open fields stretched towards the horizon, a barren expanse of land, wide and wavering as the open sea with a lush rise and fall. In the distance, black dots moved—a herd of bison grazing in languid movement—and a soft smile crept across Sansa’s lips.

She sat at the edge of the overlook with her purse next to her. It didn’t occur to her until now to take a picture, but what for? It’d only be a semblance of the real thing that was beyond description. It wasn’t just the views that held ominous wonder here, but the sense of being amongst something “other”. A picture couldn’t capture that. Sansa didn’t know why she sat here and why she’d suddenly stopped caring about time, not even as the sun sunk deeper towards the west somewhere behind thick clouds that’d rolled in.

They cast everything in gray and seemed to muffle the sounds. The birds stopped chirping. The wind stopped rustling through the grass and leaves. Silent. Everything went disturbingly silent. So much so that Sansa turned around when she swore she felt something join her. The walkway was empty, and it occurred to her then that she was alone out here. She hadn’t seen another car. The coach bus full of retirees had disappeared somewhere, perhaps moving at a faster pace or having gone in a different direction entirely.

_You should leave._

The thought invaded. It wasn’t her own and startled Sansa to the extent that she sprung from the bench, scooped up her purse, and hurried down the walkway back to her car. Whatever it was, it crept closer and even in the sanctuary of her vehicle, she still felt it chasing alongside as she zipped down the road. Why it didn’t occur to her to just turn around and leave the park, she couldn’t say. Lost in the tangle of her thoughts, she continued on despite the dread piling up, compelled by something outside herself that she couldn’t put a name to.

Around a sharp turn, Sansa slowed her speed and drew a deep breath to calm herself. Her palms were slick with sweat, she noticed now, and her knuckles flushed white as she gripped the wheel. Up ahead, she spotted another vehicle and, like being submerged in warm water, the bone-chilling terror eased from her body and she let out a shaky sigh.

_You’re being silly._ She laughed at herself and approached a station wagon pulled into the lot of another overlook.

A family of four stood outside their vehicle, looking every bit the tourists with fanny packs and visors. A woman and her daughter gazed out towards a smattering of small, mounded rock formations but turned around as Sansa’s car slowly approached. A man and his son stood in front of the hood of their station wagon. By mistake or perhaps design, they matched one another with khaki shorts and socks pulled up to their knees.

It seemed odd to her. The weather was crisp and cool, decidedly autumnal, and she didn’t catch the plates on their car to see where they were from, perhaps a colder climate. In unison, the family turned to her car and waved, all staring with their undivided attention as she passed.

A polite gesture under normal circumstances, it sat jagged at Sansa’s core, unsettling and bizarre, and something bid her to ease her foot down on the pedal and hurry past them. By the time her eyes flickered to the rearview mirror, the curvature of the road had swallowed up the family and the overlook where they’d been.

_Try to be out of the park by sunset._

Having lost track of time, twilight was already upon her and Sansa flicked on her headlights as she came upon a crossroads. She stopped and reasoned through it with the map on her lap. She could turn around and head towards the visitor center or take the crossroad that bisected the park and would put her on the highway back home. She’d only have to backtrack twenty miles and could easily make up the time. The path seemed clear.

Sansa put on her blinker, though no one was behind her, and turned right down the crossroad heading north. She released a nervous breath and resumed the playlist that’d carry her home. As the sun sank out the driver’s side window, fresh night rose on the other side of the car, darker with the smattering of clouds up above.

She pressed the accelerator and raced along the road that was far more desolate than she’d anticipated. Only grassy fields—empty and dark—followed along. She passed no other cars, no homesteads, nothing; only a ranger station at least ten miles back that’d looked empty. Sansa felt like she was the last soul on earth and the observation filled her with dread as night closed in.

The music cut out. Sansa steadied one hand on the wheel but fussed with her phone in the other. The signal was gone.

“That’s great,” she groaned and tossed her useless phone to the passenger seat where it bounced and hit the floorboard.

She glanced at her odometer. Her hands trembled, and she consoled herself knowing that she’d driven thirty miles on this road already. The highway would be in sight any minute now.

Ten minutes passed. The road stretched on in one long and flat expanse, never-ending, it seemed, and entirely featureless.

Another ten minutes. Nothing; just the same deserted stretch.

Sansa picked up speed. She barreled down the road, almost pitch black by now, nothing but her headlights to lead the way. She blazed past shadows on the black horizon—trees or bison, ghouls or beasts. She didn’t know what and didn’t care to find out. She kept her eyes steady ahead, waiting for highway signs to appear. Something. Anything.

Nothing came. Just more road, endless and delivering her into dead night. Her mouth went dry, and a chill ripped through her. She hit the brakes and pulled onto the side of the road where the car screeched to a halt.

_Think. Just think. It’s gonna be fine._

Her frantic thoughts did little to ease the way her hands quivered as she threw the car into park and felt around the floorboard for her phone. When she found it, Sansa swiped at the screen and pulled up the maps. Surely, they’d work regardless of the signal. They had to. The screen was gray and tried desperately to find her location. The signal was dead. Nothing. She had no way of telling where she was now or how far from the highway.

“I can keep going,” Sansa reasoned out loud because something shifted outside her window and she was too afraid to look. _It’s just the wind. A tree. An animal._

She closed her eyes and, when she opened them again, whatever it was had moved on.

“Or I can turn around. Maybe I just passed it without knowing.”

That was impossible. The road ended at the highway with just a campground beyond. Sansa put the car in reverse and turned around. In the very least, the road she’d been on was a known quantity. She didn’t know what was up ahead on this devilish road. It seemed to taunt her, to beckon with something diabolical, preying on her desperation to get home. She turned away from it and sped back in the direction she’d come.

Fast and faster she went. The engine roared with steady pressure to the gas pedal. She held up her phone, waiting for the signal to come back. Anything, something other than the horrendous darkness that she’d been plunged into. Twilight didn’t seem to exist here. Just an abyss.

She’d meant to put on her high beams when a preternatural warning came that she was being followed. Whatever it was, it closed in and she averted her eyes only momentarily to switch on her lights.

Her eyes drifted back to the road and her car hurtling towards a coyote standing in her path. It didn’t move or bound out of the way. It stood, staring at her with unnatural knowledge and purpose. Sansa’s scream was swallowed up by the sound of her tires squealing. The breaks locked, and the car spun.

She closed her eyes and shielded her head with her arms. Her body slammed into the steering wheel when her seatbelt didn’t engage. The car careened off the road. She felt the violent pull down a ditch and the tremendous force that plowed into the passenger side as the car smashed into a boulder.

It all stopped—the screaming that she realized now was her own; the inertia tossing her back and forth; the pain from the seatbelt cutting into the exposed skin of her collarbone. Sansa didn’t move. Her heart slammed in her chest in a wild rhythm. She kept her eyes closed and gripped her head. Her body shook so fiercely that it seemed to paralyze. In a state of catatonic shock, all she could manage were the tears spilling down her cheeks.

She didn’t know how long she stayed this way; long enough that she could finally remove her arms from her head and rest them in her lap. She waited for more pain—broken bones, bruises, the wetness of blood. Her head throbbed at the temples and her skin protested where the seat belt had rubbed a lesion on her collarbone. As Sansa palpitated her own body, she released a gasping cry that she’d miraculously come out of this unscathed.

The car was another matter. Out the windshield, steam rose from the engine that, while it hadn’t taken the brunt of the impact, had still sustained some damage. Sansa looked over to the passenger seat where the boulder had made a heavy indentation and the window was busted out. The night’s cold spilled in.

Reality set in now, and agitation replaced fear. She grabbed her phone and killed the engine that was apparently dead, anyway. Carefully, she eased open the car door and stepped outside. In the delirium and terror of the accident, Sansa swore she’d barreled down a deep ditch, but the road merely dipped towards the shoulder and the boulder wasn’t as large as she expected, the dent in her car not as catastrophic.

She huffed a laugh that crystallized on a white puff in the cold air. She lifted her eyes to the black sky, starless and moonless, no light to be found. Sansa didn’t know if she should thank the heavens for sparing her the worst of this or curse it because her phone had no signal and her car was now useless on the side of the road.

She enumerated her options. The list was short and only one appealed—sleep in her car until daylight, walk to the ranger station, and hope along the way she could flag down a passing motorist.

Sansa turned to her car, but stopped as the wind extinguished with startling abruptness, as if someone had snuffed out a flame. Everything fell silent, much like earlier. The crickets stopped singing. The trees no longer rustled. With the dead quiet came the oppressive sense of being watched again.

The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Sansa spun around. Her eyes strained in the darkness, but with no light, she could only make out shadowy silhouettes set against black. She clutched the phone to her chest, useless though it was. A pressure rose around her, like invisible walls slowly creeping in. Sansa sprinted back to her car and tugged at the door handle, but it wouldn’t budge. Locked. The door was locked. She fumbled with the keys in her hand until something drew nearer, closing the distance from behind.

Sansa turned around and, with her back pressed hard against the car, her trembling hands gripped her phone. She held up the lit screen. The coyote. It was out here somewhere, probably injured, but it had seemed more spectral than real and Sansa didn’t know what possibility terrified her the most—a wild beast or some apparition hunting her in the dark.

She heard it then. Gravel shifting somewhere in the pitch black. It cracked beneath the weight of something. Then again. And again. Louder and closer, syncopated to the frenzied rhythm of her heart slamming in her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut. _Let this be a dream. Please let this be a dream. Please._

Sansa opened her eyes. A shadow approached, hazy at the edges, but coming into sight—a rider mounted on a horse that was far too big to be real. It was real enough, though, that the hooves clopped along the cracked earth and a phantom light emerged. It lit up the rider in a ghoulish emerald hue.

She tried to scream, but the sound wouldn’t come. Her throat seized up and all she could do was look on in abject terror as the rider neared, one agonizing step in front of the other with a sinister smile playing on his lips. Half his face was a burned ruin, just like in the painting that was an abysmal approximation because his presence consumed with wicked ruthlessness.

The horse looked more beast than animal, and so too did the man atop it. In the painting, his eyes shone but now appeared dead with a pale and unnatural gray like quicksilver. The long strands of his tar black hair lifted on a breeze that didn’t exist.

She couldn’t look away. As if possessed under his control, her eyes remained fixed on his. His lips parted as he drew a breath, but his face remained a gruesome sight; not for his burns, but the ungodly horror he instilled in her.

Sansa slumped against the car, desperate to wake from this nightmare. She squeezed her eyes shut and only now realized that her cheeks were wet with petrified tears. The horse stopped its approach, and Sansa flinched when she heard the rider dismount. His boots cracked against the ground and she choked on a dry sob. Her arms wrapped tight around her middle as she felt submerged in ice water.

He stopped, and Sansa heard the rattle of his spurs when he did. It echoed all around her with impossible and deafening volume. He laughed, and that too resonated on the wind that picked up with a violent gust. Her eyes cracked open and Sansa couldn’t say what bid her to look. Madness, perhaps. Sheer and utter insanity. Slowly, she lifted her eyes to him, and he stood only a few feet from her and that emerald light had moved with him.

Taller than any man she’d ever seen, he towered over her and peered from beneath the brim of his black cowboy hat. Strong, he looked strong too; a massive and formidable beast that she had no chance of fighting off.

He stepped forward again, and his spur hit the hard earth with a metallic clank. And then again. Once more. The distance closed and the space between them grew frigid, and Sansa drew a tattered breath and squeezed her eyes shut once more. He approached, close enough that she could hear him breathe. With one more step, Sansa now stood toe-to-toe with the Badlands rider.


	2. Nocturn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Listen to Badlands Howl on SoundCloud!](https://soundcloud.com/user-656219666/badlands-howl-nocturn)
> 
> [ Check out the Badlands Howl playlist on Spotify!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1k4IcBOr7mzGLeDqHjhV1K?si=k3jSM0BjT2a33cWkhy9jDg)

“Ma’am, are you in need of some help?”

The question manifested on a deep, rumbling voice; not unkind and not the demonic howl Sansa had expected. When she cracked her eyes open, the ghastly green light had disappeared, and the night held serenity one might expect from the open expanse surrounding them and the dusting of stars up above.

Her eyes swept to the man in front of her. He stared at her expectantly through a sincere albeit stern gaze, impatient and apparently concerned now as his brows lifted in a prompt for her to answer his question.

He was still tall and towered over her with a presence that imposed more in size and bulk than some supernatural quality. Though his scars remained—starting somewhere beneath the brim of his hat and extending down to the middle of his cheek—they seemed far less gruesome now. Sansa reminded herself not to stare just as she noticed the man’s jaw set firm. When her eyes shifted to his horse, she saw it too possessed nothing of the unnatural as it grazed nearby.

The fear that took hold now wasn’t that some spectral being had ascended from the bowels of hell to carry her off, but that she was alone in the dead of night and in the middle of nowhere with a man who could easily overtake her if he wanted to. Sansa’s thumb jabbed at her phone still clutched to her chest. The screen lit up and she discreetly glanced at it. Still no signal.

The man noticed and huffed a laugh that sat firmly at the crossroads of amusement and mounting frustration at her reticence.

“I was patrolling nearby and saw what happened,” he said and shifted narrowed eyes to the empty road. “Damn coyotes. The idiots who visit the park feed them, so they bound towards cars hoping for food.”

He looked to her again, and his hands settled on his hips. In the darkness, Sansa discerned his features—no less masculine than they had been before and still bearing an uncanny resemblance to the painting of the Badlands rider. The similarities seemed to begin and end there. The man before her was more mortal than myth and apparently growing increasingly perturbed.

“You hit your head or something?” he asked, and his eyes scanned Sansa as if searching for apparent injury.

“No, I’m fine,” she finally replied on a relieved breath and slumped against her car. “Thank you.”

For a moment, he said nothing and only stared at her, as if paying particular attention to her voice. Sansa dropped her eyes to the ground and let her hands disappear into the sleeves of her sweater. The man eased towards the engine of her car and surveyed it with his head cocked to the side. His boots cracked against dry earth in deliberate steps.

“It’ll have to be towed out of here,” he declared and shook his head at the damage. 

Something in stating the obvious irritated Sansa, and she wrapped her arms tight around her chest and gazed at her useless car that, while no longer steaming, clearly was in dire need of repair.

“Are you a mechanic?” she quietly retorted, not quite a cold snap, but it brought on a chill. The man shook his head with a derisive snort.

“Do I look like one?” he countered with faint affront and, though the question was rhetorical, he settled in front of Sansa and regarded her as if he expected an answer.

Dressed in dark trousers, a black linen shirt beneath a leather vest, boots and a hat to match, he looked torn from the celluloid screen of a John Wayne movie. Had he rolled up in a tow truck and not a horse, she might’ve had faith that he could help her.

Another flush of fear worked through Sansa as she shook her head with guarded reserve and shuffled backwards to the car again. Once more, he noticed and drew a sharp breath as if it insulted in some way.

“Do you work for the park?” Sansa asked, concerned now that she’d been rude. That consideration quickly fled when the man barked a rough laugh she knew was at her expense.

“Well, I ain’t out here in the wild of night because I wanna be.”

His reply was sardonic and cutting. It seemed a retaliation in kind for the offense he took in her wariness of him. She meant to ask what the hell he expected from her and whether or not he could truly help her or if he planned on standing here all night, offering her either entirely self-evident observations or biting retorts to her questions.

Sansa’s fingers curled to her palms, and she steeled her spine but, when she matched his eyes, something in him had given way, softening his hard edges and taming his irritation that oddly resembled restlessness.

The tension in his muscular frame eased and his horse similarly responded, no longer grazing but seeming to stand at attention behind the man. He gave a heavy sigh and one hand fell from his hip to gesture towards her.

“Look, I got a place nearby,” he offered slowly, as if any sudden movement or sharply spoken word might spook her. He wasn’t exactly wrong. “I can take you there, get you out of the elements, and sort this out for you.”

Unbidden, Sansa peeled away from the car and took a step towards him. His eyes slightly widened and dropped to her feet before sweeping back up her frame. The evaluation seemed borne from disbelief rather than some lecherous intent he hid behind sincerity and concern. As if remembering herself, Sansa hesitated. She could almost hear her father issuing a warning—don’t ride off with a strange man in the black of night.

She scanned the road and the horizon devoid of light, not even the moon that was obscured behind thick clouds overhead. The man must’ve discerned her thoughts, and he laughed again; this time with resigned mirth, perhaps intent to drive some levity into the situation.

“You don’t have many options,” he reasoned. “I know this park like the back of my hand, and I can guarantee no one else is coming down this road until well after sunrise. I could leave you out here, but I don’t think you want that either.”

He was right and he knew it. He cracked a wry smile that, even in the absence of light, Sansa noticed now was rather handsome and carried a warmth she didn’t expect. Perhaps that was what bid her to nod and whisper “okay,” a single word caught on the rising wind that lifted the man’s long, jet black hair. She almost forgot herself, or at least forgot that the reasonable thing to do was grab her purse and phone charger.

As Sansa opened the car door and leaned inside to collect her things, the man gathered the reins of his horse and drew it near. She tossed her purse over her shoulder and stepped towards him.

In a gallant gesture, he offered his hand as he stood next to his horse’s flank. Sansa stepped towards him, her shoes scuffling softly in the loose dirt. She slipped her hand into his and, at the contact of skin against skin, she released a shaky breath. His hand was warm and his fingers strong, both of which surprised her in some bizarre way; as if she expected him to be cold and scarcely tangible. He was flesh and blood. Sansa lifted her eyes to his, and he mesmerized her in a way awfully similar to how the painting had.

He smiled again and gently gripped her hand as if he meant to hold it rather than offer it as purchase. Sansa carefully placed her foot in the stirrup and climbed onto his horse. The man bid her to scoot forward in the saddle as he settled behind her in what seemed an intimate way to share space, but ultimately necessary. It’d been a long while since Sansa was on horseback, but the cadence was familiar, and the man’s arms offered a cage that kept her in place. She rocked against him as the horse lurched forward into the night.

The man led the horse named Stranger (or so he told her) across the empty road at a dawdling canter. Stranger plodded into a thick fog that descended across the long, flat expanse of rocky terrain they crossed. Sansa could barely see beyond the horse’s muzzle and the dense haze seemed to dampen sound too. The night went eerily quiet. The crickets had stopped singing, the wind had ceased its howling, and the only noises Sansa could discern were Stranger’s hooves clopping against the ground.

The man seemed at ease. With his chest flush against her back, Sansa could feel his warmth seeping into her and the rise and fall of each serene breath he took. If they were lost in the fog, he didn’t let on. Reached in front of her, he loosely gripped the reins with casual ease. His hands looked strong, rough, and well-worked, she noticed. Sansa drew a deep breath and relaxed against him.

It wasn’t so odd, she supposed. The park was expansive, the terrain unforgiving, and, true to his word, the man seemed to negotiate it with an adeptness that suggested he knew it well. His skills were an asset that the park service was smart to leverage, even if he were strange.

“Don’t they give you a car?” Sansa asked.

The question left her lips without her consent and sounded more accusatory than she intended. When she opened her mouth again to apologize, the man intervened with a chuckle that rumbled against her.

“A car? Hell no. The best way to travel out here is by horseback.” He paused a moment and glanced at Sansa. She’d craned her neck over her shoulder to look at him and noticed now the stubble on his chin and how it suited his sharp jawline. “You’re from Montana,” he said through a coy grin, not mocking but teasing all the same and, under other circumstances, some might even call it flirting. “You should know that.”

Sansa’s eyes snapped forward again and her back peeled away from him as her body stiffened. A sudden chill spilled down her spine.

“How do you know where I’m from?” she demanded, but her voice was weak, almost swallowed up by the uncanny silence of the night. 

“License plates tend to give people away,” he deadpanned after a beat. 

“Oh,” Sansa breathed and settled against him again, now feeling like an utter fool and a rude one at that. She still hadn’t gotten around to registering her car in Nebraska, so her Montana plates remained.

And here he was—offering her help and shelter for the night, and Sansa had paid him with suspicion and aloof appreciation. That was the world for a woman, though. She still didn’t know this man and observed now he wasn’t garbed in the sage green shirt and olive drab tie like the other park rangers. He also didn’t have a name tag like Lou or any other accessory with the park’s insignia. He offered no identification and, while perhaps he had a point about the most appropriate means of travel, she still found it odd that by night he didn’t opt for a truck or SUV.

Misgivings on the rise again, Sansa meant to highlight these observations before they reached their destination, wherever that was, but the emerald light reappeared as a beacon in the distance. It cut through the heavy fog, now misty with moisture that clung to her skin and dampened her hair.

Stranger picked up his pace and closed the distance to the green light, but as the haze thinned and ultimately lifted Sansa saw it wasn’t a green light at all, but a porch lantern hung next to the man’s cabin door. It flickered in a phantom wind and illuminated a wooden rocking chair on a small porch.

Without the man’s direction, the horse eased up to his stable alongside the cabin. The man hopped from Stranger’s back and, without missing a beat, his large hands encircled Sansa’s waist as he lifted her from the horse. On the way down, her palms found their way to his shoulders, and she met his eyes. He placed her on the ground, but neither made a move.

Their hands remained where they were—hers on his shoulders and his on her hips now. Brief though it was, the lingering touch accompanied a look that passed between them, carrying the knowledge that he wouldn’t hurt her. Under his spell, it sent her fear away, but Sansa regained her manners enough to remove her hands from him and whisper a “thank you”. 

He muttered a response she couldn’t make out and secured Stranger in the stable. Sansa followed him to the cabin and observed how he strode, the length of his legs and strength of his body. A truly massive man, he moved stealthily despite heavy footfalls.

He led the way into a small cabin with humble surroundings, just two rooms separated by a log wall. A length of plain linen hung in a doorframe and sufficed as a barrier to what Sansa assumed was his bedroom.

She eased into the intimate space that made up his kitchen and living area that boasted only the essentials. What it lacked in flourishes, it made up for in warmth and comfort. A fire crackled in a stone fireplace with two armchairs set in front of it; the fabric thick, but tattered and faded. The place held the faintly sweet and smoky scent of burning wood.

The man strode across the room to a row of cabinets below and shelves above that made up his kitchen. It similarly spared no extravagance with mismatched porcelain dishes and wrought iron cookware. The wide-plank floors responded with dull echoes to the crack of his boots, and the hollow sound exaggerated the weight of his steps. He tossed his hat on a small wooden table in the kitchen and shook out his hair. It looked soft in the light of an oil lamp that burned at the center of the table.

Sansa neared in tentative steps and eyed a rifle sitting near the front door, not unlike where her father used to keep his shotgun until one too many children came along. With his back to her, the man shucked out of his leather vest and hung it on the back of a kitchen chair. The thin fabric of his shirt hung loose on his broad shoulders.

She’d never seen a man built like him—solid muscle and grit that most other men couldn’t manage without considerable effort. He possessed something else, though; something she failed to define. Sansa took another step forward as if closing the distance between them might elucidate it for her.

When the floorboard creaked beneath her feet, the man stilled as if remembering he wasn’t alone. He turned on his heel and matched her eyes from across the room. The light danced across his face and cast shadows against the marred side. Sansa halted mid-stride and her lips parted as she drew a breath. An odd sensation rippled through her like a pleasured buzz and brought with it resounding ease that stamped out the already dying embers of her fear.

She didn’t break her gaze and, as if still bedeviled, the question that left her lips did so without her permission.

“Are you him?”

The man cracked a smile that said he knew what she was after. He whipped out the kitchen chair from the table and sat.

“Am I who?” he asked, nonplussed and seemingly unoffended as he removed the spurs from his boots.

Too far to backtrack now, Sansa crossed her arms over her chest and dropped her eyes but peered at him from beneath her lashes when she felt the weight of his gaze pressing into her.

“The Badlands rider,” she murmured as heat flooded her cheeks, though embarrassment only accounted for part of it.

His eyes lingered on her and just as she’d evaluated him, he did the same with a slow sweep up and down her body. She let her arms settle to her side. When her sweater fell off her shoulder and he subtly bit his bottom lip, Sansa decided not to fuss with it and let it remain bare for now.

A deep laugh poured from his mouth. He didn’t answer at first; just shook his head as he laughed long and hard. Sansa took another step towards the table and flashed an anxious smile.

“I take it Lou’s still up there telling that fucking story,” the man finally said, but a rasping chuckle still roughed up his words. He hopped from his seat and snatched up an unlabeled bottle of amber alcohol and two glasses.

“No.” He slammed the bottle on the table and set one glass in front of each chair. “I’m not the Badlands rider,” he continued and uncorked the bottle before haphazardly pouring into each glass. “I’m a man who rides a horse around the Badlands, and Lou likes to give me hell.”

“Oh,” Sansa replied on a shaky exhale that expelled the rest of her worry. 

“You seem disappointed,” he commented and lifted one brow at her before motioning to the table and the drink that he hadn’t asked if she wanted. She would’ve said yes if he had. 

“No, not at all,” she assured with a bright smile and approached. Her hands trembled as she hung her purse from the back of the chair and sat down. “Relieved, actually,” she said, but found herself distracted as the man returned to his seat.

The top few buttons of his shirt were undone and previewed the muscled contour of his chest covered with dark hair. He gave a satisfied grin, one that danced with mischief that said he knew damn well her look wasn’t just an objective observation but carried something behind it, much like his. Sansa’s eyes darted away, and she tossed her hair behind her shoulder. She didn’t mean to engage in some coy game with him, but his grin broadened, and he shook his head as he lifted his glass to his lips and eyed her over the brim.

“People come here from all over and not a single one is used to the austerity of this place,” he began. “No reason they would be. They see a shadow shifting in the pale moonlight, and they think it’s a ghost. It ain’t a ghost. It’s a bison. They hear a howl of something they can’t identify and assume it’s some fucking ghoul. It ain’t a ghoul. It’s a wildcat.

“Up at the visitor center, they pander the Badlands rider story to make money during the off season. They haul out that painting, which I swear Lou had commissioned of my likeliness just to fuck with me, and hope some dumb ass will buy up key chains or other stupid shit.”

Sansa gripped the glass that warmed beneath her palms and was thankful now she hadn’t stopped in the gift shop. Her instincts had been right, though. She’d fallen for a tall tale told by a bored old man.

“That’s a very cynical view of things,” Sansa commented and mitigated any unintended offense with a smile, though she suspected the man might wear that accusation as a badge of honor.

“It’s an honest view of things,” he replied and lifted one brow at her just as his glass met his lips again. “And it’s the truth.”

Sansa mirrored his movements and sipped slowly. Whiskey or bourbon, she didn’t know what it was, but the spice, married with a touch of smoke and sweetness, was smooth on her tongue. Her cheeks warmed with another bout of embarrassment at having been so gullible and swept up in a ghoulish story so clearly spun for Halloween.

“Don’t worry,” the man assured as if tracing her unspoken thoughts. “You’re not the only one he’s duped, and you won’t be the last.”

The sentiment rung sweet despite its faintly mocking delivery. She stared at him and noticed the piercing gray of his eyes. It wasn’t the color exactly that thinned her breath or quickened her heartbeat. So much rested behind his gaze, and the weight of it left her both intrigued and unsettled in some strange way.

“Why do you live here?” Sansa asked. “You don’t even have a neighbor.”

Maybe he did. She wouldn’t have known for all the fog, but the land was desolate in a way she hadn’t even encountered in Montana, a feat in and of itself.

The man settled back in his chair that faintly crackled in response. “I don’t want a neighbor. And why shouldn’t I live here?”

Sansa shrugged. “I don’t know. It seems so…isolated.”

That was the polite way of putting it. She couldn’t imagine living this way, but a harrowing thought chilled her now—was the way she’d been living so different? She had neighbors she scarcely knew, only their tired faces when they dragged their bodies through their front door after work. She lived alone and filled the silence with background noise and the shadows with light. It wasn’t so different.

“That’s the point,” he said after drawing a long breath. “I don’t like people. I like being left alone. I do what I’m here to and spend the rest of my time doing whatever I want.”

“Do you have a wife?”

The question spilled from Sansa’s lips so abruptly that she lifted her glass as if to stop it. It was too late, and he broke with a devilish smile. 

“Are you always this forward?” the man chuckled and shook his head.

No. The answer was resoundingly no, never, absolutely not. Sansa backpedaled, head tilted to the side and the contrition saturating her words.

“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. You don’t have to answer.”

For a moment, he surveyed her with a smirk still painted on his mouth, as if sizing her up and debating her answer to his question.

“No. It’s just me,” he finally revealed and dropped his eyes to the amber liquid that he swirled in his glass. “You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t. I hear wives don’t appreciate their men bringing home strange women.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Sansa breathed and took a long sip from her drink that seemed to quell her nerves. “Are you calling me strange?” She flashed a coquettish smile across the table and loosened the tension in her body.

“Yeah. I didn’t say it was a bad thing, though.”

He leaned forward with one forearm resting on the table. With the other hand, he scratched the stubble on his chin. The combination of movements coupled with his casual and confident ease captivated her. She stared at him more brazenly than she intended, her gaze falling over him with intrigue he must’ve felt. He matched her eyes again, and some of his intensity took the knee to something else, fascination perhaps.

“You don’t know because you’re not married.” It was less a question and more a statement, and he searched her face for confirmation. 

Sansa shook her head. “No. I was engaged once, but it didn’t work out.”

She vanquished the disappointment from her voice, though it still had a habit of finding its way back in. Things never seemed to work out, no matter how hard she tried. And she tried; sometimes like forcing the wrong puzzle piece in an empty space. She’d always know it didn’t fit, but if the approximate shape was right, she’d consider it good enough and keep trying until she couldn’t kid herself any longer. Rinse, repeat, and on it went until she decided it wasn’t worth the effort anymore. _Maybe someday,_ she’d consoled herself.

He cast a sympathetic gaze at her, and the unexpected compassion behind his eyes comforted her in a way she also hadn’t expected.

“You’ve never been married,” he rasped and looked at her expectantly, though Sansa felt like they’d already covered this ground and she had thoroughly answered this question.

“No.” She shook her head and sweetened a bout of inexplicable sadness with a smile.

Sansa looked for a way out of the sudden heaviness that had been dropped at the center of the table. She turned her attention to the fireplace’s mantle lined with mementos and what seemed to be heirloom pieces—bits of pottery, frames without photos, and other antique curios. Yet another involuntary movement, Sansa rose from her seat and ambled to the mantle. The man’s eyes followed her across the room. She studied the objects and, with the indelible urge to run her fingertips over them, curled her fingers to her palms.

“If you aren’t married, then why do you have such beautiful things?” Sansa asked.

He’d turned in his seat towards her, legs open and boots planted to the floor. She licked her bottom lip and removed her gaze lest it remain on him, delighting in his solid, muscular form and how he mesmerized in such an enthralling way.

“Can’t a man appreciate beauty?”

His question drew her eyes to him again. He leaned forward with his forearms resting on his knees. His smile betrayed his desire but held some fondness too. Sansa wanted to be wrapped up in both sentiments from him.

“Of course,” she replied, and a shy laugh escaped her. “I’m just surprised. It doesn’t really seem to fit your aesthetic.”

Her own desire surfaced quick enough that it startled her, and she quickly averted her attention back to the mantle where a gleaming silver music box caught her eye. An intricate floral pattern was carved on the top and it sat on masterfully formed legs shaped into ivy leaves. A powerful urge—too strong for her to counter with manners and logic—overcame Sansa and, with a delicate touch, she boldly opened the lid to reveal a red velvet lining inside.

A tiny gasp escaped her as a morose but beautiful tune lilted from the music box and seemed familiar, though Sansa couldn’t remember where she’d heard it. In the backdrop of her enchantment, the man shifted in his seat and she felt him observing her with heavy interest.

Sansa noticed a treasure inside—a silver necklace boasting a garnet jewel, deep as oxblood and stunning even in the low light. With one finger, she carefully traced its facets and resplendent warmth filled her up with such sweet joy. A smile swept across her lips before she remembered herself again.

Smile extinguished, she carefully closed the music box and tore herself from the mantle, once more perplexed at how she’d apparently deposited her manners at the door of this man’s cabin.

“Sorry,” she laughed to dispel her embarrassment and returned to her seat at the table. “I shouldn’t be touching your things.”

The man swiveled in his chair and faced her from across the table.

“It’s alright,” he mumbled, and his shoulders rolled in a shrug. He paused and appraised her, his eyes flickering over her body. He sipped his drink and swallowed hard. “You can touch anything you’d like.”

His word choice was intentional and so was the look Sansa gave him, appraising in her own right and now toiling with the intrusive thought of running her palms along his strong body, her fingers tracing the trail of hair from his chest, down his abdomen, and even further down.

The notion left her dizzy and her chest rose and fell in a frantic rhythm that the man most definitely noticed. He flashed a bawdy smile and stared at her breasts. She liked the looks he gave her, the way his lips curled, the timbre of his voice, his very presence itself.

He cleared his throat and broke their stare. “What brought you to the park?” he asked, as if to dispel the smoldering tension that rose between them. His knuckles flushed white as he gripped his glass hard.

“Well, I’m from Billings, but I live in Omaha now. I moved there not too long ago. I came home for my brother’s wedding and was just passing through on my way back to Nebraska.”

Her answer was factual, but not entirely the truth and the sterility in which she spoke unmasked that difference. Something drew her here, compelled her in a way she still didn’t understand, but tracing the origins of the instinct brought on a crushing reality.

“God, that reminds me!” Sansa gasped and spun around in her chair to dig her phone out of her purse. The man sat up abruptly in his seat. “My mom is probably worried sick. I was supposed to call her when I got home,” she prattled as she jabbed at her phone, its battery almost drained and still no signal. Sansa sighed and tossed the useless thing back into her purse. “Is it okay if I use your phone to let her know I’m alright?”

As she stared at him, his jaw tensed. He shook his head and said, “I don’t have a phone.”

She blinked at him and noticed now the absence of a TV, radio, microwave. He seemed to have rejected modern conveniences, but not having a phone seemed negligent.

“You…you don’t have a phone?” Sansa stammered and endeavored to hide her disbelief.

“Did you see telephone lines out there?” the man defended and flung one hand towards the door and the night beyond. “Of course, I don’t. Cell phones don’t fare any better. It’d be a waste of resources. If I need something, I ride to the nearest ranger’s station.”

Sansa sunk back in her seat with a sigh and gnawed her bottom lip. She knew her mother and could envision the woman now—pacing the floor and waiting by the phone as her father tried to corral her back to bed.

“Look, your mother will be fine,” the man broke in with wayward consolation. “Your father too. Brothers and sister. They’ll all be fine.”

She slowly lifted her eyes to him and stilled as confusion flooded her.

“I didn’t tell you that I have multiple siblings,” Sansa said, befuddled by the casual way he divined details about her life. 

“I just assumed,” he explained with a shrug. “Montana folk tend to have big families.”

Dubious, Sansa lifted one brow at him. “I think you mean Utah.”

“Same difference,” he huffed. 

Bright laughter spilled from Sansa and she shed her tension once more. “No, big difference.”

The man matched her merriment with a rumbling chuckle and finished the last bit of his drink as Sansa still nursed what was left in her own glass. As their shared mirth quieted to a tranquil silence, he met her eyes from across the table.

The fire light fell over him in a dazzling way, illuminating his masculine features and Sansa’s stomach fluttered with butterflies. Her lips curled in a faint smile for him. She wondered if he was drunk for the way his eyes went heavy-lidded and unabashed as he stared at her but didn’t speak. Whatever it was, he wasn’t inebriated on the drink and Sansa understood the dizzying allure as she also felt lightheaded and flushed.

“Are you hungry?” A distracted question, his unwavering gaze steadied on her lips with more longing than he probably intended to reveal.

“A little,” Sansa replied, but her answer was complicated.

She hadn’t eaten since lunchtime and that had been a grab-and-go affair, a sad gas station sandwich and squashed chips. She was hungry in theory, but an empty stomach wasn’t what she needed satisfied. Sansa yearned with another need, and it seemed he did too.

He stood abruptly from his seat and, though he turned his back to her in an oddly demure gesture for such a rough man, she recognized by his movements that he adjusted his undoubtedly hard manhood in his pants. With the realization, a smile exploded across her lips and, when she shifted in her seat, Sansa felt the wetness pooled between her legs.

“I don’t know how to cook too much on account of not having a wife,” he informed with his back still to her as he dug out his wrought iron skillet and a linen sack from the shelf.

“You know, you don’t have to have a wife to cook for yourself,” Sansa responded with a girlish laugh. She yanked the sweater further down her shoulder, enough to reveal a soft swell of cleavage, and let her bra strap slip from her shoulder too.

The man turned around with half a sentence issuing from his lips, but the rest of it died on his tongue when his eyes landed on her. His gaze fell along her exposed skin, bare shoulder and full breast spilling from the top of her bra. He looked at her as if she’d shed her clothes and sat naked at the table. A faint groan escaped him and, though he’d done his best to hide his arousal, Sansa still glimpsed his hardened bulge, though he’d secured it against the waistband of his pants.

“I guess,” he mumbled and cleared his throat, but turned away again. “My ways are old-fashioned, I suppose.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Corn bread?” he asked, and his eyes darted away again.

“Sure,” Sansa agreed and tugged her sweater back up her shoulder, more crestfallen than she cared to admit.

She offered to help him, but he refused. The recipe was simple, and he seemed adept at it, well enough to whip it up despite the way his movements had gone graceless. Though Sansa had covered herself again, her presence seemed to distract him. He eyed her where he could—as he dumped the batter into the cast-iron skillet, tossed it into the black pot-belly oven in the corner, and chattered about his property as it baked.

Sansa listened to him and admired his build with a heavy gaze that ran counter to all her ladylike courtesies. She smiled politely, though, and asked questions here and there, but she’d put her manners on autopilot. Her mind raced with salacious thoughts and fantasies—what his lips might feel like against her own or perhaps between her legs; how his fingers might trail against her skin; how he’d fill her up, each thrust divine and consuming.

By the time he pulled the corn bread from the oven, the cabin rose with stifling heat. Sansa wanted nothing more than to peel out of her sweater, and the man looked at her with a burning desire that said he wanted nothing more than that too. Every move he made held frustrated tension that he seemed to lose control of. When sweat beaded his brow, he bounded across the room and opened the window to invite in a cool breeze.

“If you get too cold, you’ll tell me?” The question came as he stared at her in earnest and a different passion on the rise; a protectiveness that Sansa found so unexpectedly sweet that it disarmed her of hot-blooded yearning.

She nodded and, though the spell hadn’t been broken, it took on a different shape; more tender and deep as he served her corn bread and water when she asked for it instead of alcohol.

They ate with non-consequential conversation, and the meal offered some distraction from the sultry undercurrent that’d infused the evening so far. It seemed to Sansa the social equivalent of chattering about the weather, though most of the questions remained on her. She’d asked the man a fair few—if he had family nearby; if he enjoyed working for the park; how he ended up here. He kept his answers simple and curt, though still polite enough—no family nearby; he liked his work just fine; he’d grown up in South Dakota and, besides some trips here and there, hadn’t ventured far.

It was clear he led a simple life. On the surface, nothing dazzled, and he didn’t put up appearances that it did. Perhaps that was the root of Sansa’s intrigue. She found herself enchanted with him and engrossed in the details he shared, the way he spoke, how his voice resonated in the small space they occupied. The conversation drew to a lull, and the man studied Sansa. It seemed to her that he’d peeled back layers and was veritably peering into her soul.

“You came here for something,” he quietly remarked and, for the second time in the evening, the lack of inflection might’ve suggested it wasn’t a question, but he still waited for an affirmative from her.

Sansa hesitated and took a long sip of water to buy herself some time, but, when she returned the glass to the table and couldn’t meet his eyes, the man had settled back in his seat and left a wide-open space of silence for her to insert her answer.

“I just find that most people who drift into this place do so for a reason,” he explained as Sansa still gathered her words and, though he’d just let her off the hook, she answered with the truth—the same truth she’d failed to find all day and couldn’t manifest for anyone who’d asked.

“I felt drawn here,” she admitted and tried to offer more, but her lips pressed together, and she shook her head. “I don’t really have an explanation beyond that.”

He closed his eyes, as if absorbing her answer. When he opened them again, the man gave a faint smile and even fainter nod.

“You don’t need more of an explanation. The one you gave is valid.”

“Is it?” Sansa exhaled a laugh and stared at the water in her cup as if divining her own inner mysteries for him. All that came were confessions. “It seems strange to me. I’ve felt lost for a while now. When you have nowhere to go and are rooted to nothing in particular, the winds have a way of sweeping you in odd directions.”

She lifted her gaze when she heard the man’s chair groan as he shifted in it. He abandoned his corn bread and folded his forearms on the table, leaning forward and lowering his voice.

“Is that how you ended up in Omaha?” he asked and listened intently to her answer. This line of questioning seemed to pique particular interest in him.

She turned the question over in her mind. She’d left Montana certain of why she needed to get away—meet new people; experience different things; find herself—but landed in Omaha not so sure she’d made the right decision.

“Yeah, it was actually,” Sansa divulged. “I wanted to get away. My father said to me, ‘No matter where you go, there you are.’ I thought at the time it was his way of convincing me to stay, but he was right. You can never escape yourself.”

“No, you can’t,” the man agreed and appeared as though he were admiring her in a different way now. “I should know,” he muttered, shook his head, and sipped his drink.

He looked tired; not in the physical sense, but in a way that left his soul weary. Maybe it was the restlessness of drifting, but Sansa couldn’t reconcile that with the details he’d shared about himself.

“How long have you been here?” she asked and thought it was a fairly straightforward question until it took him long, fraught moments to answer. When he did, he stared towards the corner of the cabin as if watching old memories play out there. It rendered him in a somber state, lost in a daze he couldn’t seem to shake. 

“Forever it seems,” he finally answered. “The years slip by. All the same.”

He swirled his glass against the table and stared into it. Sansa watched him, noticing once more the handsome shape of his features—sharp cheek bones, masculine brow, strong jaw, and nicely shaped lips. Her attention on him drew his gaze. With the oil lamp flickering between them, they remained locked at the eyes.

He seemed familiar in a way that she couldn’t put her finger on. She’d been chasing it down all night, a forgotten memory just a breath away from being remembered again. It had to be the painting at the visitor center. The likeliness was apparent, and the artist clearly knew this man. Still, it wasn’t just his outward visage, but a feeling he imparted in her—the sense of being wanted; the desire to be nearer; the warmth and allure.

“You look like you want to say something,” he observed when Sansa remained quiet and hadn’t broken their stare. 

She shook her head. “No.”

She tried to distract her hands. They trembled. Why was she trembling? He didn’t scare her, and her nerves had dissolved with a pleasured buzz from the alcohol. Sansa finally looked away, and she cast a glance around his cabin as she defaulted to courtesy.

“You have a nice home,” she complimented with sincerity. 

The man shrugged and surveyed their surroundings. “I make do.”

Somber heaviness washed over him and drew his lips in a frown. The sentiment ultimately settled behind his eyes.

“I’m sure you’re tired,” he whispered, and that sadness suffused his voice too. “You can have the bed.”

He pushed abruptly from the table, downed his drink, and collected the dishes before tossing them in a basin on the counter. Sansa stood, flustered as she followed him across the room and through the linen threshold into his bedroom. _Did I say something wrong?_

She tussled with the question in the dark as the man struck a match and lit an oil lamp on a small wooden table next to a metal-framed bed. Much like the rest of the cabin, the room boasted no exorbitant features—just a dresser with a washbasin and mirror, two bedside tables, and the bed itself.

Sansa wrapped her arms tight around her middle and wrestled with the urge to ask him if she’d offended him or invited in the shadow that’d descended. Instead, she watched him open a dresser drawer and pull out a shirt. He turned around and held it out to her.

“Here,” he said and eased towards her in measured steps, as if hesitating in his approach. “If you don’t want to sleep in your clothes, you can sleep in this. I’ll shut that window, so you don’t get cold.”

Sansa closed the distance between them and admired his height. She reached for the shirt and, when she took it, their fingers brushed together in a ghost of a touch, but enough that Sansa’s lips parted, and she drew a shaky breath.

She eased closer, her eyes fixated on his broad chest and the long black hair that fell over his shoulders. She forgot the question she wanted to ask him and instead now battled the urge to touch him. He gazed down at her and his jaw tensed with what she hoped was the same desire coursing through him too.

“Where will you sleep?” Sansa asked with shy reserve. It wasn’t an invitation exactly but, if he’d taken it that way, she wouldn’t have corrected the assumption.

He seemed to read her intentions again and cracked an amused smile but tipped his head to the timber beam above them.

“On the roof. Beneath the stars.” His smile turned warm and Sansa apparently didn’t respond how she was supposed to. Her heart picked up its rhythm again, and she gripped the fabric of the shirt he’d given her.

“It’s a joke,” he clarified though she’d already assumed, but had gone tongue-tied and nervous. “The floor is fine by me. I’ve slept in worse places, believe me.”

Sansa gazed up at him with a sweet smile and this all felt reminiscent of the awkward dance at the end of a date; the “should we, shouldn’t we” of stolen touches and unspoken desires. But she’d missed a crucial part. The realization slammed into her with the force of a freight train and torpedoed the enchantment, sinking it in an instant. 

“I didn’t even ask for your name,” Sansa gasped, utterly bewildered with herself, and lifted a hand to her mouth as the night’s chill burrowed into her. She gaped up at him, horrified that he’d invited her into his home, and she hadn’t even introduced herself, as if she’d just barreled right past that part with a familiarity she had no right to. “I…I’m so sorry. I have no idea why. I can’t believe I didn’t ask for your name.”

The man hardly looked offended. If anything, the shadow lifted and the levity returned behind his eyes and on his lips when he grinned at her.

“It’s alright,” he said through a rasping laugh. “If we’re being fair, I didn’t ask for yours either. I just assumed you didn’t want to give it.”

Scrambling for her manners now and to right this entirely unintentional but unacceptable wrong, Sansa held out her hand to him.

“No, that’s not it at all,” she affirmed with effusiveness to expel such a mortifying gaffe. “I’m Sansa Stark.”

He took her hand and wrapped his fingers around her palm with a gentle squeeze.

“Sansa,” he repeated on a heartfelt hush. “Sandor Clegane.”

A torrent ran through her, enough that it might’ve upended her where she stood. Her knees weakened and a soft breath of laughter escaped her, though she didn’t know why.

“Sandor.” His name departed her mouth on a deep sigh. It suited him. “Thank you for everything.”

She hadn’t let go of his hand. She held it like it was hers to hold and he stared at their palms pressed together, her fingers wrapped around his.

“It’s my pleasure,” he replied on a deep rumble.

In some old-fashioned gesture, she thought he might lift her hand to his lips and place a chaste kiss to her knuckles. He didn’t but patted the top of her hand and let go. Sansa watched him pace to the door. He held back the linen curtain but stopped beneath the doorframe. With his back to her, Sansa saw him draw a deep inhale that he released as a heavy but muted sigh. He turned halfway around, and she thought he might ask if she wanted his company.

Maybe he had meant to. Ultimately, she wouldn’t know. The corner of his mouth lifted in a subdued smile that faded, and the heel of one balled fist gently met the doorframe in a light tap.

“Goodnight, Sansa,” he said.

“Goodnight, Sandor,” she whispered back.

He dropped the linen curtain and disappeared behind it, though she heard his boots against the floorboard on the other side. Sansa turned around to the center of the room where the flickering oil lamp cast dancing shadows against the wall and across the bed. She unfolded his shirt—beige with small, silver buttons and out-of-date, though the fabric’s weave was of a scarce quality.

She lifted her sweater over her head and unhooked her bra. The evening had grown cool enough that her skin prickled, and nipples hardened. She pulled off her boots and shed her socks and leggings before pulling on Sandor’s shirt. Her arms disappeared in the billowing sleeves and it fell halfway down her thighs, but the fabric felt like a caress against her skin. She indulged an erotic instinct to strip off her underwear. In nothing but his shirt, Sansa gathered up her clothes from the floor, folded them, and placed them on his dresser.

Her reflection in the mirror stilled her movements, and she settled back on her heels to study herself. She half-expected her make-up and hair to be a mess and only now acknowledged how long her day had been and how late it must be. She looked pretty, though; her hair slightly wind-blown but in long waves and her make-up had held up too. Sansa combed her fingers through her hair but turned away from the mirror and padded to the bed.

She pulled back a quilt and climbed in. She’d never encountered a mattress like this before. On her back, she struggled to identify its stuffing. It felt like sinking into tightly packed cotton balls, no springs or foam. Though the texture was odd, it was soft enough and so too was the pillow beneath her head. The bed linens held Sandor’s scent—masculine and woodsy, faintly sweet and smoky. She closed her eyes and breathed him in.

_Sandor Clegane._

She heard him settle against the floor and, when she opened her eyes, the light had dimmed on the other side of the curtain, just a faint glow from the dying fire. She battled the guilt. Here she was, comfortable and warm in his bed, and he’d sleep on the cold and unforgiving floor.

Outside, the wind howled fiercely and rattled the small windows of the cabin. It was strong enough that even the thick lumber walls responded with a haunting groan. Sansa unceremoniously tossed the quilt from her bare legs and sat up. She didn’t know what sent her out of bed and quietly traversing the room towards the linen curtain. She wasn’t scared or restless. It wasn’t even guilt per se.

In silent movements, Sansa pulled back the curtain and peeked to where Sandor laid on the floor. His hands rested behind his head that was propped up on a pillow from one of his armchairs. She couldn’t see his face—he’d placed his hat over it—but surmised by the shallow rise and fall of his chest that he wasn’t asleep.

The yearning burned in her, as slow and persistent as the embers still glowing in the fireplace. She slipped through the curtain and felt the chill seep through the thin fabric of his shirt to her naked body underneath. The sensation tantalized. She approached Sandor and, when the floorboard creaked beneath her bare feet, he pulled one hand from behind his head and lifted the hat from his face to peer at her from underneath the brim. Though it cast a shadow over his features, Sansa saw him smirk.

“Something the matter with your sleeping arrangements?” he asked and set his hat to the side as he propped himself up on one elbow.

Sansa matched his eyes and shook her head. She stepped closer and further into the hazy sphere of light issuing from the fireplace. Sandor sucked in a sharp but silent breath as his eyes roamed her body—up the long expanse of her legs; the silhouette of her curves probably visible through the thin fabric; the tops of her breasts exposed by the undone buttons of his shirt.

Something insatiable and hungry surfaced in his eyes. He licked his bottom lip and sat up, pulling one knee towards his chest and resting his forearm on top of it. His other palm pressed against the floor and held up his weight. He wouldn’t close the distance between them, she knew. He’d wait for her invitation.

Sansa took another step forward and, when his eyes settled between her legs, she wondered if he could tell she was naked there too.

She stared at the floor and curled her fingers around the loose sleeves of his shirt. “I don’t want to put you out of your bed.”

She lifted her eyes enough to gaze at him from beneath her lashes and bit her bottom lip. Sansa hoped the suggestion was enough and didn’t know if she had the bravery in her to tell him what she wanted if he needed it said.

Sandor appraised her once more before matching her eyes. “Then don’t,” he whispered with surprising affection.

Mindless and with butterflies besieging her belly, Sansa nodded and drew a shaky breath as Sandor stood from the floor. Without a word, he paced towards her, took her by the hand, and led her through the linen curtain into the bedroom.

Sansa climbed onto the bed as Sandor undressed on the other side. With his back to her, he yanked off his boots and dropped them to the floor where they landed with a resounding thud. He removed his belt and unbuttoned his shirt that he shrugged out of with a roll of each massive shoulder.

Sansa watched, transfixed and soaking in the sight. She knew he was muscled like a bull—had felt it on horseback and noticed it throughout the night—but seeing him now, it was undeniable. His bare back was well-defined, and his arms were covered in thick slabs of muscle.

He must’ve felt her gaze and glanced at her from over his shoulder. Sansa’s eyes darted away, but it was too late. Her fingertips nervously followed the quilt’s pattern, and so too did her eyes.

“You claimed you aren’t forward,” Sandor chuckled and turned around. Sansa’s eyes fluttered to him, long enough to notice his bare chest was just as brawny and entirely appealing, enough that her fingers ran through her hair to occupy her hands, lest she crawl to the edge of the bed and indulge the urge to touch him.

“I’m just looking,” she replied with an innocent shrug, a ruse because it wasn’t just a look of wholesome curiosity.

He knew, of course, and when he hadn’t moved, Sansa lifted her eyes to him. Sandor stared back at her, impassible and achingly alluring as his jaw clenched hard.

“You had your look. Now I want mine.”

The intensity behind his eyes probably should’ve scared her. It might’ve but a sly grin creased his lips and something about him just wouldn’t let that fear take root. Part of Sansa wanted to apologize and tell him she wasn’t this kind of girl. And she wasn’t. Her heart wasn’t constructed in such a way to allow for one-night stands and barreling into hook-ups knowing damn well it wouldn’t go anywhere.

The other part of Sansa took over, though; the one bewitched by the night and emboldened because of it. Sitting on her knees, she faced him and held his stare as she undid a button. Sandor’s lips parted and brows folded as he watched another button come undone. And then another. With one last button, Sansa let the shirt fall off her shoulders to reveal her breasts. His head tilted back slightly as he stared down at her.

“You’re a beautiful woman, Sansa,” he whispered, and she knew he meant it.

The gaze that fell over her body admired rather than devoured and ultimately settled on her eyes. In the dim light, she saw that something solemn had joined his lust, but she couldn’t say what or why, so she swung her legs out from underneath her and settled back on her elbows.

“And you’re a beautiful man,” she muttered and slowly spread her legs for him to see. Her bare breasts rose and fell with each frantic breath and she’d never been this bold before, but Sansa reached between her legs and trailed one finger through the wetness there.

Sandor’s eyes widened, and he watched as if a woman had never done this in front of him. Enthralled, panting breaths escaped his lips and he faintly groaned when Sansa dipped a finger inside of herself and let her head fall back as she moaned. His wonderment only encouraged her further and her other hand lifted to her breast where she lightly traced her nipple.

Sansa gazed at him, her vision blurry on the edges with untamed desire as she watched him shed his pants and undergarments. Perhaps this was his way of balancing the scales and subduing her with teasing moves all his own. His thick cock stood erect, bigger than any man she’d ever been with and sure to fill her up. He took himself in hand and stroked in a purposeful rhythm that matched the one Sansa had set with swipes between her legs.

She wanted him. She wanted him inside of her, fucking her hard against this strange mattress, consuming her as he buried himself inside as deep as he could. Sandor propped one knee on the mattress and bent over. Sansa stilled, and he stared at her with ravenous hunger roiling behind his eyes. She’d get her wish, she knew now, and the look he gave promised that he’d deliver.

Sandor crawled towards her and settled between her open legs. Sansa wrapped her arms around his shoulders as he eased on top of her. For a moment, he simply stared, his gaze a heartfelt flicker from her lips to her eyes, and his brows drew together with a look of affection and reverie. It was enough that Sansa felt guilty for wanting him to ravage her when he so clearly felt something more. She wasn’t that kind of girl, Sansa desperately wanted to assure him. She wouldn’t give herself to him this way if she didn’t feel something too.

Sansa stared up at him. His hair swept against her cheek and she cradled his face in her hands, burned and unburned alike and with equal tenderness. Sandor gazed down at her as if relishing the moment before their first kiss. He closed his eyes and dipped his head until his lips brushed against hers, tentative at first. Sansa savored the feel of his mouth soft against hers, the taste of him when his tongue parted her lips, the warmth of his body on top of her, so strong and protective. She felt small beneath him but cherished too. It seemed an odd thing to her—to hardly know him but to feel looked after in this way.

Sandor deepened the kiss with ardent need gathering behind each of his movements—the way he fondled her breast; how his manhood glided between her soaked lower lips; the nips and licks that interspersed his kiss. Sansa bucked her hips to meet his movements, grinding her clit against his thick shaft.

His hands freely roamed her curves—up her thighs, hips, waist, and breasts—and Sansa’s legs fell further apart as she led the rhythm in how their bodies met. She wrapped her legs tight around his hips and pressed her breasts to his bare chest. Their kiss deepened in other ways too—not the tentative give-and-take of strangers, but of lovers who anticipated the aching need of the other and responded accordingly. Sansa held onto Sandor, drawing him closer and writhing beneath him.

He broke their kiss momentarily to reach between her legs where his fingers traipsed through the wetness there with a guttural groan. His full lips, supple and plush for such a hard man, peppered kisses along her chin, down her neck, and between her breasts. His tongue met her warm skin and ambled towards a nipple where he sucked gently, but in delicious concert with his hand between her legs and a finger that slipped inside.

He seemed to savor her pleasure. As his mouth traveled, he smiled devilishly as he observed every sound from Sansa’s lips, the way she nearly begged for him to be inside of her, to take her however he pleased because it’d surely please her too. His enormous hands nearly encircled her waist as his mouth passed that threshold and eased towards the treasure between her thighs.

Sandor gazed up at her, quickly wet his lips, and dipped the tip of his tongue between her legs in one lick that terminated in a kiss. Just a tease, he turned his head and lavished his attention to the inside of her thigh.

“I always loved this part,” he muttered against her skin and kissed his way to her drenched folds, his breath a warm burst there. 

With no more preamble, he delved between her legs with supple licks and kisses deftly placed. Sansa’s head fell back against the pillow as she muttered to the ceiling on each sighing breath.

“I see why,” she gasped and combed her fingers through his hair. “You’re good at it.”

He moaned a response and the deep rumble vibrated with divine sensation. All his love for this act manifested on the well-practiced way his tongue swirled at her opening and circled her clit with enough pressure that it elicited Sansa’s slowly unraveling release. When her body tightened and her hips rose to meet his mouth, Sandor eased back and Sansa drifted from the precipice of her climax only to be brought to the edge again, closer and harder with each ebb and flow.

Her breaths heaved from her, something between a wheeze and a moan, and Sansa sat up. Sandor lifted his head from between her legs, his lips glistening and eyes dark with desire. Sansa urged him to roll to his back, and he obliged, but gripped her ass and encouraged her to scoot up his broad chest and over his shoulders until Sansa’s knees sunk against the pillow on either side of his head.

Sansa flashed a sultry smile down at him as she gripped the metal headboard. Sandor returned her smile and positioned his mouth between her legs. He matched her eyes as he set in again. Sansa watched how his lips moved against her own lower lips and she abandoned all reserve. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know this man. She knew enough apparently to roll her hips as she rode his mouth, deftly grinding against his tongue that lapped at her clit and ushered in another peak.

When it hit, it hit hard and with enough force that her thighs trembled, and her heart nearly slammed out of her chest. She gripped the headboard to hold up her weight. As Sandor’s kisses and licks slowed, Sansa eased back down his body and reached behind her to grip his cock. She stroked him and relished the sound of his moans, his mouth still soaked from her release, his strong fingers gripping her hips.

Sansa rose to her knees, ready to take him inside of her and ride him like her life depended on it, but a competing desire ripped through her with sudden insurgence. The confusion alone bid her to climb off of him. Sandor propped himself up on his elbow, and his features clouded with concern as he reached for her. His hand smoothed up the outside of her thigh in a comforting touch.

“What’s the matter?” he rasped.

Sansa took his hand and pulled him towards her.

“I want to feel you.”

The request issued quiet and uncertain from her mouth because what she was really asking was for him to make love to her; that if he truly meant what rested behind his eyes, she wanted him to communicate it in his touch—the way he held onto her; the way he kissed her; breathed her in; drew her near.

And he did.

Sandor gathered her in his arms and laid her down against the mattress with quiet veneration of her body beneath him. Sansa wrapped her arms around his neck as he settled on top of her. His lips brushed against hers in a heartfelt kiss as he reached between them and swirled his tip against her opening.

“Look at me,” Sandor whispered and cradled her face with his other hand.

Sansa matched his gaze that was besotted and heavy with something far more than lust as he eased inside of her. Her eyes fluttered, but she ultimately kept his gaze and couldn’t look away even if she wanted to. And she didn’t want to.

Sansa held onto him and memorized the rumble of his deep groans, the taste of his lips when he kissed her so lovingly, and the way he felt between her legs, how he filled her up and the ecstasy of each thrust inside of her that was slow and deep and meant to be savored.

“I want you,” she panted against his mouth when it all became too much, the overwhelming symphony of sensations coupled with the insatiable desire she had for this man.

“I’m yours,” he moaned, and his rhythm picked up.

Sansa met each movement as she writhed beneath him. Her mouth crushed against his and her arms clung tighter to him, coiled around his shoulders and her legs wrapped around his hips, every part of them joined together. 

She came undone beneath him and the love they made wasn’t the stuff of one-night stands. It possessed the aching urgency and all-consuming tenderness of make-up sex; the kind that could set the bed ablaze with its heat and passion and she couldn’t remember a time she’d ever felt this way or had been bewitched with such longing.

Sandor’s breaths quickened, his chest heaving against Sansa’s. His hand groped for hers and their fingers entwined. He squeezed her hand as his body tightened. Sansa bucked to meet his hips, the subtle demand for him to thrust deeper and harder, and he obliged enough to send her tumbling towards her peak.

Sansa’s head fell back and, as the pressure surmounted, she was only vaguely aware of his mouth at her neck. She bit her bottom lip hard as her climax surged in her. Sansa cried out his name with her release and heard him chuckle. That mirth was short-lived, and he tensed again, his rhythm faster now as he grunted and seethed through clenched teeth.

Sansa held him hard against her, unwilling to part. She wanted to feel him release inside of her with some primal and dizzying urge for him to make his mark. As he moaned, Sansa felt Sandor pulse inside of her and he crushed her against his chest, his face buried in the crook of her neck. While he was left indisposed and apparently in raptures with his comedown, Sansa savored the feel of his body—warm, strong, and damp from sweat—on top of her. She wrapped her legs tight around his hips and her arms around his shoulders.

“Stay inside me,” she whispered against his mouth when he lifted his head to kiss her.

Sandor nodded, and his tongue parted her lips. Sansa couldn’t say how long they savored one another in leisurely kisses, deep and impassioned in the afterglow of their lovemaking. Their hands roamed one another’s bodies, rediscovering anything they might’ve missed. She would’ve happily continued into eternity this way.

Sandor eventually stilled. With his forehead resting against hers, his palm cradled her cheek. As she’d asked, they remained joined, neither wanting to part. When they did, the kiss he gave her quieted something in Sansa, but beckoned a host of odd emotions. Sandor rolled off of her and collapsed to the mattress, appearing thoroughly spent. Sansa settled next to him and they turned towards one another with a small space between them, enough to gaze upon the other.

In the aftermath, Sansa too felt rocked to her core and not in the way that meant she’d walk funny tomorrow and divulge to her girlfriends the crazy night she’d had. The act left her haunted in some savage way. A strange storm gathered in her, unnoticed at first until Sansa felt it brutalizing her from within. She wanted to cry but didn’t know why. Her heart was in ruins from a disaster she hadn’t witnessed.

She stared at Sandor, wanting to tell him, but she didn’t know how to put it all into words, so she gently stroked his hand that rested between them. He seemed to notice the change in her like reading the winds.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked as though he seemed to have the answer for himself already but was testing her.

She contemplated him in the flickering glow of the oil lamp that encased him in a halo of dull light. Sansa reached for him and her fingertips grazed his jaw, up his cheek, and to his temple where she smoothed back his hair. The pad of one finger trailed the hooked bridge of his nose. She knew his shape and could trace it with her eyes closed, remarking on all his features she had only just discovered. The newfound familiarity remained inexplicable. With no way to define it, Sansa let her fingertips brush against his lips and diverted with humor instead.

“Do you always rescue women from the park and sweep them off their feet back here for this?”

She sweetened the question with a laugh and a gentle smile. Sandor’s palm smoothed from the dip of her waist up her ribcage and back down. The humor was lost on him. His expression hardened, grave and with weight behind it that meant he needed her to understand the gravity too.

“No,” he whispered, and his hand gripped her hip as if to impart meaning. “You’re the only one.”

Flustered, Sansa quieted and scrambled for a way to respond, but he’d knocked her off kilter. Repeatedly and all evening, he’d blindsided her when she least expected it and Sansa struggled to regain herself in the wake of whatever bid him to look at her or touch her how he did. Her heart ached in a way she didn’t understand, as if broken by an unseen hand.

“Do you let men sweep you off your feet and take you home for something like this?”

Sandor’s question didn’t intend humor in the way hers had. He held fast to his stoicism and eyed her closely as he listened. The question would normally offend her for what it implied, but she recognized the sincerity behind it and that he wasn’t accusing her of anything or passing judgment. Instead, it came more as a way to measure her heart, to understand the importance she applied to making love as they just had.

Sansa took his hand that’d been at her hip and intertwined her fingers in his.

“No, you’re the only one,” she avowed and a great wave of want rose in her. The force of it would pull her under. 

Sandor squeezed her hand and dropped his eyes to the space between them.

“We should get some sleep. We’ll want to get your car squared away first thing in the morning.”

She responded with a nod and thought he might say something else for the way he looked at her, but he let go of her hand and rolled to his back. His body held a stilted rigidity as he cast a troubled gaze at the ceiling with his brows folded together. Helpless against whatever afflicted him, Sansa watched the ragged quality that his breathing took on and the darkness that fell over him.

She scooted across the bed to his side and cupped the burned side of his face with deliberate intent. Hovering above him, Sansa gazed down upon him as he wrapped his arm around the small of her back and seemed to relish having her near, though it didn’t vanquish the vexation in him. Sandor stared at her imploringly, waiting on an anxious breath for her to speak as his eyes darted across her face.

Sansa licked her bottom lip with an otherworldly desire to confess things to him she never would a man she’d just met. It made no sense, and perhaps it wasn’t meant to. Sandor closed his eyes with a pained expression still ravaging his features, but it softened when he open them again and he brushed his hand through her hair. 

“Are you warm enough?” he asked in a tortuous way, incongruent to such a mundane question.

Though Sansa nodded, he pulled up the quilt and covered her bare back and shoulders with it anyhow. The sensation—tender and with so much unspoken affection behind it—sent a shock wave through her, enough that she gasped with a feeling as though the wind had been knocked out of her.

“What is it?” Sandor’s voice, edged with so much mournful desire, caught in his throat.

An unspoken term of endearment—a “darling” or “sweetheart” or something else entirely—died on his lips. He’d come so close to saying it that Sansa could almost pluck it from his mouth and voice it herself. She knew the rhythm, but not the name. Whatever those words were, he held them back along with so much more.

Her eyes welled with tears again; the ones that surely were only a product of empathy for him and whatever it was he toiled with inside. If she searched her own heart, it resided in her too, but remained shrouded in shadows, too deep to reach. Sansa didn’t answer but placed a soft kiss to his lips and laid down in his arms where she felt she was meant to be and drifted to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and for all the love on Chapter 1! It really means so much! This story may be short (compared to what I normally write), but it’s very special to me and perhaps one of my favorites too! I hope you enjoyed the second installment and feel free to leave your thoughts! Much love to you all!


	3. Psychopomp

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this story and for all the love you’ve shown it!
> 
> [ You can listen to this chapter on SoundCloud!](https://soundcloud.com/user-656219666/badlands-howl-psychopomp)
> 
> I did some noise filtering on this chapter and the others to improve the audio quality. Thank you for being patient with me as I bumble my way through podfic’ing!

Dawn’s sterling light warmed her softly shut eyelids. It set the black ablaze in vermilion and rust as serene sleep ebbed and flowed. Sansa’s head rested against something hard and unmalleable. Her body contorted in an awkward position, and perhaps that was what woke her—the nagging ache at her lower back and the pain splintering across her forehead.

She cracked her eyes open and her windshield came into focus and, just beyond it, her car’s slightly rumpled hood. Sansa sat up slowly and regained awareness of her limbs—her arms cradling the steering wheel; her legs crossed; one foot overcome with pins and needles.

The sun beamed bright on the horizon and dusted the open fields around her in a golden glow. A mist descended and softened the landscape, imparting a dreamy haze. Sansa emerged from her own fog of sleep that must’ve been deep. It’d left her rested despite vivid dreams and reposed despite the jarring revelation that she’d apparently slept out in the wild last night.

_Sandor._

His name careened into her. The abruptness stole her breath and her hand flew to her mouth with a gasp. Sansa evaluated herself, still dressed in a gray sweater and leggings. A dream, he must’ve been a dream.

The disorientation seized her now. Sansa’s eyes darted to the passenger seat and her purse and all its contents scattered across the floor. Amongst the tubes of lip balm, hair ties, and crumpled receipts, her cell phone caught her eye and reality set in.

“Shit,” Sansa sighed, and her head lolled back against the headrest.

She leaned across the center console and snatched up her phone. Sansa scrolled through the missed calls—her mother and father taking turns all night and even Robb, on his honeymoon, calling at well past midnight after Sansa’s mother had probably worried herself sick. She didn’t even look at the texts; dozens of them that would drive guilt into her like a stake through the heart.

“Unbelievable,” Sansa grumbled, swiped at her phone, and pressed it to her ear.

A silver lining—there was enough signal that the call connected. The phone rang. What would she say? She’d lied about where she was and told her mother she’d only stopped at a rest stop to stretch her legs. Not only had she stopped to wander around the Badlands, but she’d gotten herself lost and stranded in the dead of night.

It was fine now, Sansa reasoned. There was no sense in worrying her mother after what was probably a long night of pacing by the phone. Another ring came, and then another. By the time the call went to voicemail, Sansa entrenched herself in the lie and resolved to never spin a tale like this ever again. The voicemail beeped and Sansa put on a show, one meant to smooth over whatever damage she’d caused throughout the night.

“Hey mom!” she chirped to dispel any lingering sleep on her end or worry on her mother’s. “I’m so sorry I didn’t call. I know how worried you must be, but I’m fine. I’m home now and I’ll talk to you soon. I love you.”

Sansa hung up, but the worry hadn’t departed. Neither had the guilt. Both sat jagged at her core and gnawed. There was something else, though—the listlessness that she’d come here to vanquish, but it had only gained persistence; like a word on the tip of the tongue or a memory just out of reach. It begged to be acknowledged, but she didn’t know what _it_ was.

The car. Surely, that was it. Sansa palmed the floor for her keys before noticing the glint of metal catching a sun stream. Her keys hung from the ignition and another memory jolted through her.

_Sandor Clegane._

He’d said that her car would have to be towed out of here and that he’d help her take care of it in the morning. _This_ morning. Sansa gazed out the window. The man was nowhere to be found, as much a manifestation of dreams as he was a living, breathing being.

But he’d been real.

She remembered the warmth of his hands against her skin, his lips between her legs, the way he’d held her, kissed her, soaked her in with veneration she’d never known. No dream had ever been so real, but the unusual protectiveness he paid her sat at tremendous odds with her apparent abandonment.

Perhaps she’d conjured him up—a fantasy constructed in the delirium of fear, a protector to deliver her from the wild and treacherous night. Sansa’s fingertips felt for bumps to the head but found none. The trauma and exhaustion surely wove visions with near-tangible threads, enough that she had touch memories and an entire narrative of an evening spent together.

Tendrils of disappointment inexplicably spread. With them came a stunning realization. She wished he was real and that she’d woken in his arms. That was the way of dreams, though. Reality never quite lived up to the fantasy, and perhaps that was for the best.

If anything, she’d woken up with luck on her side—enough luck that her phone had plenty of battery, though she could’ve sworn it’d been drained, and enough signal to place calls. Sansa would try her luck again and push its boundaries because she had nothing to lose.

She held her breath, gripped the keys, and turned the ignition. The engine fired up with no coaxing or abhorrent cries that meant something was broken. In her dream, the car was totaled and Sandor Clegane—who apparently her wistful imagination spun into existence on its own—warned that her car was in a bad way. In fresh daylight, the damage was mostly cosmetic and wouldn’t prevent her journey home.

“Thank God,” she breathed and slumped in her seat.

The sun bathed her skin, and she reveled in the warmth and quiet tranquility that washed over her now. Sansa put the car in reverse and, content with luck’s good graces that’d been more than generous, decided not to take any chances. Even in daylight, the road seemed bedeviled, so Sansa turned the car around and headed in the direction she’d come.

Last night’s distortion of time and distance lifted. After only a few miles, she passed the ranger station and after a few miles more reached the fork in the road that’d led her here. Time. She remembered it now. The dashboard clock told her it was noon, but the sun begged to differ, and Sansa didn’t pay much mind to the discrepancy.

She snaked through the park, driving slow and savoring the sites lit up by the rising sun. The mist lifted, and the path was clear. A bright blue sky triumphed with white powderpuff clouds drifting by. The horror of night had been washed away and replaced with resplendent merriment of a crisp autumn day, bright with color and alive on a chilly breeze.

As she navigated the curve of the road, Sansa slowed her speed and neared an overlook. It occurred to her then that she hadn’t passed any other cars and all the other overlooks boasted no visitors; all but this one.

The station wagon was familiar, and so too was the family gathered outside of it. They still wore their fanny packs and vaguely matching pastel outfits incongruent to the season. Sansa passed and they once again all turned to her and waved with kind smiles. She waved back, and the sentiment seemed sweet—a family vacation, and they had the park all to themselves. Sansa eyed her phone in the cup holder. She missed her parents and realized now that her radio silence might very well have ruined Halloween for Bran and Rickon. She hoped it hadn’t.

Something about passing the visitor center felt like putting this strange excursion behind her. She’d come to this place for no reason in particular, at least not one she could easily identify, and leaving it behind was like waking from an enchantment. The spell had been broken and Sansa understood with bizarre clarity what Lou meant. The Badlands allured with something liminal and otherworldly, like a siren’s song, and Sansa had surrendered to its haunting call.

It was often said that people were haunted more often than places. Yet, the Badlands was steeped in something unexplainable that echoed through time and lost no vigor with the passage of decades. The land itself inherited the unknowable; its secrets sheltered in root and stem, rock and soil. It was whispered on the wind and carried on bird song. The trees stood witness to those mysteries. Haunted places perhaps attracted haunted people. Sansa left it behind without so much as a glance in the rearview mirror and thought that was just as well.

But something followed her as she took the entrance ramp to the highway. It raced alongside as she cracked the windows and drove in transcendent silence. It observed how she lost time, hours’ worth that she couldn’t explain, as the sun set when she neared Omaha. She hadn’t gone off the path, she’d remember if she had, and yet the journey that should’ve taken six hours stretched on until twilight rose again.

Sansa hadn’t shed the uncanny bewitchment. Chief amongst it all were her visions from last night—the emerald light; the man who emerged from it; the passion they’d shared. She foolishly thought putting distance between her and the Badlands meant putting him out of her mind because it was all just a dream. Yet, with each passing mile and a sun that set with unearthly speed, his image surfaced in her memories more corporeal and shedding layers of the surreal.

She remembered his scent—masculine and woodsy like burning leaves—and his rough and calloused palms that caressed her with surprising softness. She remembered the weight of him on top of her, the heat between her legs as he moved inside of her, the taste of his lips, the tenderness of his touch. Her heart ached, and she wished he would’ve stayed in the Badlands as just an odd memory, because she didn’t want to be haunted by a man who wasn’t even real.

When she couldn’t free her thoughts from him, Sansa drove faster on the empty roads that carried her home. Darkness closed in. The sun set in crimson with the silhouette of black trees lining a desolate highway. Their gnarled branches formed strange shadows against an unnatural sky.

She arrived home in the black of night, the sun long set, and her neighbors all turned in for the evening. Not even their lights burned in the windows. Sansa ignored that oddity as she hauled her suitcase inside and dropped it at the door. She slumped against the wall in the entryway.

The house held a disturbing quiet and the absence of all the white noise that was usually here—the hum of the refrigerator; the rumble of the radiator; the omnipresent electrical buzz of modern life. It filtered out the unusual that now reigned supreme in the silent spaces of an eerie night.

The house was old, built at the turn of the century, and still boasted all its charms and quirks—floors that creaked; walls that groaned; lights that sometimes flickered. Sansa felt around in the dark for the bannister and, once her palm met the oak’s grain, she followed the railing up the steps, too tired to lug her bags with her.

At the top of the stairs, Sansa flicked on the hall light and the bulbs pulsed with an odd yellow glow. The bulbs were old and the fixture even older. She eyed it warily and summarily forgot about it as she entered the bedroom. The light from the hall sufficed as she pulled a thin white nightgown from the closet and underwear from a drawer. The house held a chill that might’ve bid her to select something warmer, but Sansa moved without accord or thought, distracted by a pressure that filled the air.

She stopped in the center of the room and listened for sounds that weren’t there. The presence had an electric quality, static and buzzing without sound, only feel. The hairs on her arms stood on end and Sansa reasoned it was only the cold. She quickly padded across the hall with her nightclothes. In the bathroom, she turned on the heat lamp that illuminated the room in ruby red. She peeled out of her clothes and turned on the shower.

As she waited for steam to rise, the heat lamp soaked into her bare skin, a hollow imitation of a lover’s embrace; warmth but no weight and comfort but no meaning. Sansa faltered at the sensation and remembered his touch.

_Sandor Clegane._

His voice had been consuming and deep. She remembered its vibration and the sound of his moans when he’d made love to her. Wisps of steam filled the bathroom and Sansa stepped into the shower.

Perhaps that was it, she speculated as the water rushed over her skin. Maybe it had been real, and their tryst was only meant to last just one night, and yet her heart wasn’t built that way. It hadn’t been put together to allow the passion and tender desire they’d shared to be so easily discarded. The soul-stirring hollowness she felt was merely a product of never knowing what had become of him or how their night ended and the morning began. Perhaps it was only a dream. Somehow that hurt more.

Sansa tried to scrub him clean. She hoped the water would dissolve the memories that’d seeped beneath her skin and crawled to all the spaces she couldn’t reach. She hadn’t invited him in like this. Yet here he was—the memories alive with that emerald light and the visions of him complete in her mind, not redacted in parts like dreams often were.

She turned off the shower, more troubled now than she had been before. The somber ache in her gained momentum as Sansa toweled off and slathered lotion on her skin. The heat lamp’s timer would soon be up, and she’d be plunged into darkness, all but the hallway light that still pulsed in such an odd way. Sansa pulled on her underwear and slipped into the nightgown that was silken against her damp skin. Gazing in the mirror, she combed through her hair in methodical movements that mesmerized with cyclical rhythm.

With the towel, she squeezed out the length of her hair, drying the strands as she emerged in the hall. The scuffed wooden floors were cold beneath her feet as she crossed into the bedroom. 

Sansa stopped as she passed the threshold. What was only a soft pressure and whispering disturbance before now pressed into her skin with deliberate weight. Her heart slammed in her chest, a resounding thud in her own ears.

_I’m not alone._

A presence had joined her, the same one she’d felt all the way home. It’d followed her here. Sansa swallowed hard and couldn’t move. Rooted to her spot, she stilled and hoped the horrid feeling would wash over her and move on.

It remained.

It gained power with each agonizing moment that crawled by. Sansa drew a deep breath and her eyes swept from her bare feet, across the floor, and up to the bed. Sitting at the end, she saw the silhouette; just a black shadow in the dark. Sansa gasped and dropped the towel to the floor. The shadow turned, and she saw now the outline of his hat, the breadth of his shoulders, the bulk of his arms.

Him. It was him. Sandor Clegane.

Sansa squeezed her eyes shut. He couldn’t be here. He was only a dream; one she’d probably conjured after hitting her head, though she had no scars or injuries. He couldn’t be here. It was impossible.

She heard the bed creak as he stood, and his boots hit the floor in heavy steps as he approached. Sansa opened her eyes again and backed towards the door.

Her limbs shook, but her stomach fluttered. An odd bombardment of contrasting emotions tore through her. Her mind raced as Sandor eased nearer. He looked the same as he had when he found her last night.

This solidified it. It was all real. Of course, it was. The imagination wasn’t meant to manifest what it had with him, not unless it was some lovelorn wish. And though he was that wish made real, Sansa shuffled backwards, aware now of his height and build, size and strength. Despite the inexplicable affinity she felt for him, he was still only a stranger. The phantasmal now fled in favor of the practical.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Sansa breathed. Propped with her back against the doorframe, she straddled the threshold with one foot in the bedroom and one in the hall. “How did you get in here?”

Sandor halted his approach. Beneath the brim of his hat, she saw the piercing quicksilver of his eyes; the color not quite natural but still fascinating. The corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk.

“The door,” he responded tepidly. The rumble of his voice eased Sansa’s fear just enough that she peeled away from the doorframe and turned to him. 

He answered the question she asked—the immediate peculiarity of how he’d gained entrance to her home—but other questions sprouted. By his own admission, he didn’t own a car. Even if he’d borrowed one or found some other means to get to Omaha, there was no way he could’ve caught up to her. Then again, Sansa had hours’ worth of time she couldn’t account for. That thought alone terrified her. She shook her head and goosebumps prickled her skin as a chill crept through the room, though no windows were open.

“I locked my door,” she countered with false confidence.

Did she lock the door? Sansa couldn’t remember. She always locked it, a muscle memory of living alone. If she’d done it tonight, it wasn’t intentional, and she had no recollection.

Sandor huffed a shallow laugh and dropped his head. Sansa eyed him with competing desires—to be near him again, but fear rooted her beneath the doorframe.

“Okay, well, you asked me a question, and I answered,” Sandor replied and lifted his head to peer at her.

His hair hung loose beneath his hat and she remembered its satin quality, soft against the inside of her thighs when he kissed between her legs. Warmth ran through her now and conquered the cold. Sansa took a few steps into the room and Sandor matched her ingress.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“For you.”

His answer should’ve frightened her. She was a woman living alone and now a man who shouldn’t be here had somehow found his way in. He’d said it so sweetly, though, and she’d listened for menace, anything that might suggest he was here to hurt her. There was nothing of the sort to be found; not in the way he spoke, the way he carried himself, or the quiet panting breaths passing his parted lips.

She’d already given herself to him and had made an uneasy peace with letting it go. Perhaps he was crazy. What did she even know about him? For the better part of their evening together, she didn’t even know his name. And now Sansa faced even more questions—how she’d ended up at her car and why the memories of getting there didn’t exist. Had he drugged her? No. He wouldn’t have. She knew little of him, but she knew that for sure.

Her heart strummed a steady rhythm. Sansa curled her fingers to her palms so he might not notice how her hands shook, but his gaze dropped and settled there, so he must have anyway.

“Look, if this is about last night,” Sansa began on a quiver and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I don’t know what happened or how I got back to my car. I assume you dropped me off, but I don’t know what you want from me now.”

Sandor came closer and leaned tentatively into the few steps he took. Sansa battled the instinct to close the distance and backed towards the hall instead. When she did, Sandor stopped and a sullen smile drifted across his lips, though panic resided behind his eyes.

“You don’t remember, do you?” he whispered and removed his hat. He clutched it to his chest and his eyes implored her with so much sadness.

Sansa stared at him—the way his brows gently folded together; the look he gave her, sodden with something she’d felt too, but couldn’t quite understand; the cautious hopefulness as he waited for her answer.

“I just told you I don’t remember,” Sansa insisted with farcical certainty.

As she matched his eyes, her throat burned in the prelude to tears, perhaps sympathy for the heartache he regarded her with. Something about her tore him to pieces. Sansa had noticed it in their night together and she hurt for him. Or perhaps with him. She didn’t know.

“I’m not talking about last night,” Sandor said with what looked to be great difficulty. He paused and his gaze flickered to the ground before lifting to her again. “I’m talking about all the other nights. And days. The years.”

He spat out the last bit like bitter poison; “years” said so somberly and aching and on a voice that wavered. The familiarity surfaced again—some faint echo of what haunted him. She felt it. It was what had led her to the Badlands. Sansa saw it clear as day now. They were kindred in the scar they carried and the wound that still existed somewhere beneath it. But what had delivered the blow?

Tears pricked her eyes and blurred her vision. She hadn’t asked them to and didn’t understand why she felt gutted as she did now.

“Who are you?”

Sansa clutched her chest as an unusual pain, unlike any she’d encountered, ripped through her and she backed away from him. In a frantic movement that startled her, Sandor darted towards her.

“Sansa—” he pled and gripped her forearm in a firm grasp, as if he meant to pull her into his arms.

_I’m not yours,_ she wanted to cry and plead, but it burned like a lie on her tongue so she swallowed it down but could do less about the tears that wet her cheeks and rolled over her lips.

She wrenched her arm from him and might as well have driven a dagger through his heart for the bewildered look of devastation he gave her, as if she’d set his world ablaze and rejoiced in the ashes. And she felt it too, sharing whatever ravaged him from within. It consumed her just as thoroughly.

“I don’t know who you are, but I need you to leave,” she demanded and slowly shook her head. Another step backwards and she was almost to the doorway now, ready to run from him, but her legs wouldn’t obey her command. Her body was poised to defy her and send her into his arms.

Sandor held out his hand to her; one strong, calloused hand that had touched her with unbridled affection that didn’t care that they’d only known each other for mere hours. She hadn’t cared either in those moments. It didn’t seem to matter. The time shared, and the time lost was nothing, just a forgotten currency. Sandor’s eyes, wide and wild, drifted about her face and he gaped at her as if calling forth some esoteric knowledge.

“You’re crying,” he rasped with deliberate trepidation, as if he sensed one misstep might spook her. He eased forward in an almost indiscernible step. Sansa stared at him and licked away the salty tears on her lips. Those tears barreled at a furious pace down her cheeks. An avalanche within, it all came apart, ripping at the seams of whatever held her together.

“I know some part of you remembers.” He took another step forward and urged her to take his hand. He eyed the bedroom door like a perilous foe, as if she were edging towards a cliff and he’d come to pull her to safety.

“I’m calling the police.” Sansa spun around and almost crossed the threshold into the hall, but Sandor intervened with frantic urgency.

“That necklace is yours!” he hollered.

It wasn’t the suddenness of his voice booming through the room that stopped Sansa dead in her tracks with her back still to him.

The necklace.

She could see it clearly in her mind’s eye—a blood-red jewel and silver that had never tarnished. Her nimble fingers had taken care of it, and she knew the way she had once laced its chain around her fingers. Impossible. She’d only encountered it last night.

Sansa’s bottom lip trembled; so too did her limbs gone graceless now and bound to bring her to the floor. With unearthly sadness, she felt like she was drowning and desperate for a breath. She heaved and shivered against the cold of the night and squeezed her eyes shut when he spoke again. She could blind herself to the truth, but she couldn’t stop him from voicing it. He came closer, one step for every few words he spoke.

“I traveled to California once when it was still wild, and legends spread across the prairie of great wealth to be had out there. I set out to make a better life for us. I didn’t find much, but I found that necklace and I knew you needed to have it.”

His words hit her back with palpable force. One by one, they embedded in her like sharp splinters of forgotten pain. It wasn’t her. His soul was so clearly lost, but whoever he’d been searching for or remembered, it wasn’t her.

Sansa slowly turned around, ready to offer her condolences to him and help however she could but let him down gently and explain that she wasn’t who he sought. Her eyes fell upon him and that resolve fled. It abandoned her with this catastrophic truth.

“You wore it twice,” Sandor told her and inched closer, grief-battered just as he had been in the darkest hours of the night they’d shared. She’d cradled his face then and kissed him sweetly. He’d been imploring her to remember and harbored pain whenever she regarded him as a stranger.

“I’ve never worn that necklace,” Sansa lied.

She remembered the weight of it against her neck, the way the chain sometimes itched, the pattern of the facets beneath her finger and how he’d playfully chided her about smudging the jewel. She remembered the delight of its presence, inextricable from the joy of his return home after a long journey to the west.

Sansa shook her head to dislodge the false memory. It wasn’t hers. He was putting it there with his imaginative suggestions and fanciful stories. Her whole world was coming apart, dashed and broken, and all she could do was cry silent tears for recollections that were not her own.

“You thought it was too flashy for everyday affairs,” he relayed with sorrow. “I promised that I would give you a life to match it. You said you didn’t need that, and you didn’t want it. As long as we were together. That’s all you ever wanted. It was all you ever asked of me.”

Sansa dropped her head and wrung her hands in front of her. It was wrong. This was wrong. He’d made a mistake. Someone had made a mistake. When she lifted her gaze, she searched his face, and the familiarity slammed into her, visions from a forgotten dream surfacing and finding its place.

He came closer, enough to touch her. That nearness fire started a need in Sansa too—to touch him, to hold him, to seek the comfort he might give, but for what? What tragedy had she endured that might explain the way tears spilled down her cheeks, the way her skin burned hot now, or the agonizing pain in her chest?

“And we were together. We hated to be apart,” Sandor spoke again, another plea. “Do you remember?”

Sansa’s eyes darted about the room, understanding it was her own but nothing seemed familiar anymore, only him—the way he smelled, the way he looked at her now, even the clothes he wore, the sound of his boots against the floor, the cadence of his walk, every breath he took. She knew him long before he found her in the night. She knew him.

“I don’t…I…” Sansa shook her head in adamant refusal and lifted a trembling hand to her forehead that howled in pain. Her heart was in turmoil, desperately wanting to be the one he remembered and reeling at what that would mean. “That wasn’t me,” Sansa sobbed, and both her palms rested on her belly.

He reached her now, standing tall and strong in front of her and the space between them filling with his warmth and presence. Sandor rested one large hand on top of hers and stared down at her.

“We had a child,” he whispered. “A girl. Our first. You wanted a big family. You came from a big family and you wanted that. I never had that, so I wanted it too.”

Tears clouded her vision and Sansa dropped her eyes to their hands with bone-chilling disbelief paling in comparison to anguish that had no equal. It wasn’t meant to. 

Sandor’s voice faintly shook as he continued on a soft breath and he too had suffered. “She didn’t survive the hard winter. She was three.”

Sansa already knew. He didn’t have to say. The sense of loss and grief hurled into her with preternatural force, reaching through lifetimes to deliver its blow. It sent Sansa to the bed where she collapsed against the edge.

It wasn’t just a child, or a husband, but an entire existence already lived. The details were missing, but a scaffold of love and mourning, happiness and sorrow remained; memories etched in her heart so she might retrace them in another life. When she closed her eyes, the visions of Sandor came.

He’d mourned their child too, believing himself a failed protector. He’d fought in the Mexican War, fought for great big swathes of America. A proud, distinguished, fierce man who’d triumphed over death to return home to her and yet an invisible foe, one he was powerless to fight, took their baby like a coward in the night.

Behind closed eyes, Sansa saw another dreadful night, a town disappearing beneath the snow; so much snow falling in thick sheets that blotted out the moon and the stars. She could feel the cold on her lips, the way her limbs ached from shivering, how her cheeks itched from the salt of tears that’d dried there, white puffs of her breath as she begged for him to come to bed. He’d dug out firewood too wet to catch flame, but he tried; throughout the night, he tried for her sake.

“Snow,” Sansa said with unusual calm washing over her, and it felt like she was floating. “Wet snow. It froze so heavy and hard.”

She opened her eyes again when the mattress dipped with Sandor’s weight next to her. He gathered her hands and placed them in his lap. Now she was the one imploring him with her gaze and scooting closer so that no distance remained between them. She pulled one leg onto the bed and turned to him. Her eyes traced his face as he lifted a hand and cupped her cheek. His thumb swiped at her tears.

Sandor nodded. “We married in the springtime. You loved—”

“Bluebells,” Sansa whispered, and her eyes drifted to the paintings on the wall behind him; paintings of bluebells in golden light. She’d always loved them—bluebells she drew as a child; bluebells from flower markets; bluebells in paintings, in perfume. They were an echo from another time.

Another vision came—a warm day, fragrant with the smell of grass and earth softened with soaking rains from the day before. The clouds broke for their wedding and bent the knee to the bluest skies anyone had ever seen. All their guests had said so and remarked it was a sign that their marriage was blessed. Sansa hadn’t needed others to tell her that. He was the blessing, she’d whispered to him after their vows and Sandor had stared at her much like he was now, as if she’d redefined some part of his existence with love and adoration he’d never hoped to know.

“I put them in my hair that day,” Sansa remembered. She leaned into his touch and smiled. “We had honey cakes and sweet wine.”

She remembered the taste of their wedding cake on his lips and how she’d been embarrassed for how often she kissed her new husband, but the wine coursing through her veins had encouraged her affection. _“In all the world, I’d always choose you,”_ she’d told him, and worried he might think it was just the wine that’d gone to her head. He understood she meant it and she told him nearly every day after so he might never forget.

“In all the world, I’d always choose you,” Sansa repeated to him so he might remember now too. The words were a release. They’d tickled at the back of her throat throughout the night and she’d fought the urge to whisper them to him; a man she’d never met but had loved for lifetimes.

Sandor’s jaw clenched, and he pressed a kiss to her forehead. With a tremulous sigh he pulled away, but tears clung to his lashes and Sansa searched for some way to comfort him. The urge to hum bubbled up from within as her lips pressed against his in a soft kiss. She followed the memory, chasing after it like a kite string on an errant breeze. She rested her forehead against his, her nose nuzzling the tip of his as she squeezed her eyes shut.

“You called me little bird,” she muttered against his mouth. Little bird. She’d remembered the rhythm and now she remembered the name. “I was your little bird. You liked to hear me sing.”

Her voice broke by the end, interrupted on a cry. Sandor pulled away and his features were besieged with a torrent of relief and elation until he noticed the tears wetting her cheeks and understood the question that had yet to come; the one he’d had the answer to the moment he came upon her; the one he knew she didn’t understand until now.

“I didn’t survive the car wreck, did I?”

Sansa couldn’t meet his eyes when she asked and instead stared at their hands entwined. Her silent tears pattered their fingers clasped together. The incongruent details of the night before found new meaning—how she inexplicably walked away without so much as a scratch; her car’s similar fate; Sandor emerging from that emerald light; the strange slippage of time that followed rules of another realm.

Sandor pressed his lips to her temple. “No, my little bird,” he whispered, his breath warm against her skin, and his hands squeezed hers. “You didn’t. I’ve come to take you home.”

He let go of her hand and reached into the inside pocket of his vest to produce a pocket watch. Unlike the necklace, the watch wore the years in tarnished silver and deep scratches. Sandor held it in his palm and Sansa traced her fingertips over the bird engraved on the outside.

“Open it,” he urged with soft insistence. “You remember how.”

Sansa glanced at him and smiled at the certainty, his faith in her memories. Her fingertip circumnavigated the outside of the watch body until it met a raised portion at the top, only discoverable for those who knew where to look. She knew.

When Sansa pressed it, the cover popped open to reveal a watch face on one side and, on the other side, a small, sketched image of a woman, of her. The likeliness left no room for confusion or denial.

“It’s all I had left of you,” he muttered on a broken breath. “It’s all I had.” He closed his eyes and freed the tears there.

Sansa rested her forehead against his. Nose to nose, she whispered, “I’m here now. You’ll never have to be without me again.”

She could bear the distance no longer. Sansa threw her arms around his neck and clung to him. He held her against his chest and, though they no longer existed on the mortal plane, she felt his heart racing, the warmth of his lips as he kissed her cheek, the longing in his embrace. With one hand, he cradled the back of her head and the other pressed against the small of her back.

“I remember,” Sansa sighed. “I remember now.”

A lifetime of memories exploded within her. It came violent. It wasn’t gentle, nor was it kind. It ripped through her with horrible force. She gasped with pain she’d never known, pain no living being was meant to understand. Sandor held her tight as the misery commenced. It raged within her like an unforgiving storm, and the only shelter from it was in his arms.

“How could I have forgotten?” she cried and embraced him harder. It seemed cruel that she had. All throughout her life, these memories had been there, moving like a shadow on the periphery, but gone whenever she turned to look.

He held her through the storm, but when it calmed, it left her weary and shattered. Sandor eased his embrace enough that Sansa could settle back and look at him—her light, her life, her soul. She searched his eyes that’d seen all that she had. They’d lived it together. Sansa lifted a hand to the burned side of his face and, with another flash, remembered the story of his scars.

He’d told her early in their courtship. Near a clear spring, she’d sat on a fallen log in a summer dress of blue with a matching ribbon in her hair meant to impress him. Up above, the sun had filtered through a lush canopy of leaves that gleamed like emerald gems in the light.

In the end, it wasn’t her blue ribbon that impressed him, but her compassion and consolation. Both had disarmed him and sent them down a path of love and a union Sansa had to fight for. Others couldn’t understand why him. She didn’t bother to put it into words for fools; only for her father, who’d sought a better match, as if there could be another. Him. It was always going to be him. She’d settle for no less. Her vehemence on the matter had left no room for recourse.

Sansa bit her bottom lip to stifle the tears that brimmed in her eyes, but they fell down her cheeks anyhow. She kissed Sandor hard and with the desire to never separate again. Her tongue parted his lips, her body pressed against his, and the kiss only broke so she could embrace him.

Sandor scooted towards the center of the bed and gathered Sansa in his arms as he laid down. Her head rested in the nook of his shoulder and she gazed up at him and understood the anguish he’d carried, the kind that’d seemed inextricably part of his being. She understood too the bittersweet reunion they’d had and the agony he must’ve felt in waiting for her to remember and fearing the consequences if she hadn’t.

Sandor brushed the hair from her cheek and his lips swept against hers with more memories surfacing from the depths of whatever she was now.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she told him between kisses, a tearful confession to dull the pain he too had endured. “It was never the same. I tried, but you weren’t here.”

It was the only common thread she could trace in these memories; the lifetimes she’d lived with heartache, searching, longing, of wanting him near but not knowing how to find him, lost in a world without him in it.

It seemed to her a soul was just a tapestry of memories woven together with strands of time. Some cruel turn of fate saw it fit to rip at the fabric she and Sandor had joined together and they’d both suffered tremendously for it. And where Sansa had the benefit of forgetting, Sandor hadn’t. He’d existed in the purgatory of remembering and waiting for her to return.

Sansa pressed her hand to his chest and his breaths came even and serene. She lifted her fingers to trace his sharp cheekbone, the hooked bridge of his nose, his lips. Peace seemed to fall upon him. She’d set him free, Sansa realized. She remembered, and it set him free.

He squeezed his eyes shut and his brows knit together. “I’ve missed you too,” he whispered in the small space between them.

In the chronology of her memories, Sansa landed on those of her last life—of her mother and father; the family she’d leave behind; her life snuffed out for reasons she couldn’t explain other than it was time. For her and for Sandor, it was time. The parting meant she’d left tragedy behind. She stared at her hand still resting on his chest with the solemn knowledge her fingers weren’t flesh and bone, but something else. She was something else. In death, she now lived.

With an inexorable ache, a mournful cry escaped her. “Oh God, I’m gone.”

Sandor held her close with empathy that said he too had endured this same suffering but had done so alone. Sansa buried her face against his chest, breathed in the scent of him, and her fingers gripped the loose fabric of his shirt. She cried for those she left behind. She cried for the life she lost. She cried for the end of a long journey, though she might rejoice that the time to rest had finally come.

Where was it written that death came easy and sweet and whose living hand—tender flesh and warm blood—could inscribe that the passing was as gentle as a lover’s kiss and as soft as a dream?

And what cruelty assumed that the parting meant abandoning compassion for those who remained; that her soul couldn’t ache for her mother who’d never be the same? Or her father who’d carry guilt at not protecting his girl? Or her brothers who wouldn’t understand? Or her sister who’d grapple with anger towards God?

Sansa focused on Sandor’s hands smoothing up and down her back, the way he kissed away the tears and his whispered words of comfort—she wasn’t gone, he’d found her; he was here now; they wouldn’t be parted again; he was meant to come for her. The sum of it all lulled Sansa into somber tranquility. The dim light of the hall had taken on an emerald hue that now allured. They stared at one another, submerged in the togetherness and the love they shared that had known no equal. In all her lives, it’d had no rival. How could it?

“Don’t cry now,” he muttered and lifted her hand to his lips and placed a kiss to her fingers. “All that’s gone. All that pain and suffering. It’s gone.”

Sansa nodded and, as if he’d spoken some charm, she felt the release and the mortal ties now severed. By the grace of some being, the memories near death had been blotted out. She didn’t remember how it’d come to pass nor did she know the pain or fear or fury; just sweet sleep that brought silent dreams until the light came again for another life.

“What happened to us?” Sansa asked when she sensed he remembered.

“Do you really want to know?” he asked and gripped her hand. The sorrow quickly returned to him, haunted even in death. 

“I’d rather hear it from you than remember on my own.”

Sandor drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he stared at her as he spoke, low and deep, and she sensed this was the only time he’d ever shared this tale. Its lonesome burden was evident; torment he’d suffered through endlessly in their time apart.

“After our daughter passed, you weren’t the same. Hollow and haunted. It made you susceptible to the sickness. I kept you safe as best I could. I kept the cold away, though some nights you laid in my arms shivering so fiercely under the blankets, I was convinced you wouldn’t make it ’til morning. You got sick not long after our daughter passed. For weeks, I watched it consume you. You fought so hard on my behalf. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you too, so I ventured out for the doctor. Almost everyone in the town had already succumb. The survivors turned me away, too terrified of inviting death in. By the time I came back, you were already gone.”

He closed his eyes and Sansa understood. A hundred years and more, he still carried the trauma and guilt that she’d died alone. Sansa scooted towards him and kissed his forehead, his cheek, the crooked bridge of his nose; kisses that meant she forgave. He’d come for her now. He was there when she left the world, and he guided her on with patience and love until she understood and remembered.

“I went mad,” Sandor whispered with a tremor running through his voice. “That part of the legend Lou told you is true. I rode out into the cold, dead night, heading for the Badlands where a medicine man lived. I thought he could bring you back, that he might have some power over death. It was a fool’s errand. I didn’t survive the trip. The cold came. Then the light. I’d ridden east, so I thought it was the sun. I turned away because you were west. I rode hard and fast to find you again. When I realized what I was running from, I still refused. I rode towards the darkness and made it back to our homestead. Everything was different. The snow was gone, but so were you.

“Time passed. I realized what happened, but not where I was. Some in-between place, trapped in the Badlands, the place where I’d perished. I tried to ride out, but I always ended up right back where I started. I couldn’t leave, not until now. Once I came to terms with it, things got easier in a way. I saw people. For a while, they couldn’t see me. Every now and then, someone would look at me with horror that meant they saw. The legend started then.

“I realized I had to wait for you to return to me. I couldn’t go and find you. You had to live your life—however many that ended up being—do what you needed to and, when it was time, you’d find me. And you did. You came for me, so now I’m coming for you. I woke up from our night together and you were gone. I tried once more to leave and rode towards that emerald light I’ve been running from. It brought me here.”

“That light brought you where you belonged,” Sansa soothed. “With me. You always belong with me.”

She ran her fingers through the long strands of Sandor’s hair. She always loved his hair, and he always adored when she played with it; even now with his eyes shut and a soft smile on his lips. 

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting so long,” Sansa said with a heavy sigh, thick with frustration. “If I’d known, I would’ve come sooner, as soon as I could. I never would’ve made you wait so long.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Sandor chuckled at her fervor and his hand settled in the dip of her waist. “And it wasn’t all that long. I’d have waited an eternity for you, however long it took. I couldn’t go without you because we’re one. We were made at the same time, you and I, but put into two bodies and sent off into separate lives.”

The sadness had fallen away and left behind space for Sansa to marvel at the sense of being whole. The vacancies in her being were perfectly matched to the abundances of his, and his in hers, and they were one.

“Why?” Sansa asked and draped her leg over his hip. Her fingers toyed with the buttons of his shirt. “It seems cruel to have made us search for one another over lifetimes.”

Sandor eased forward and kissed her slow with all his loving affection behind the way his warm mouth met hers. He gripped her backside and rocked with her, their bodies meeting and melding together as she pulled him closer. 

He shook his head, just as perplexed after all this time. “I don’t know. People think you get all the answers. You don’t. It’s just an understanding that happens. A knowing.”

He stared at her and Sansa nodded with recognition that the understanding was seamless and ever-present, echoing through the universe’s design in life, an enigma no longer. The natural world sheltered the answer; as plain as day for those who knew where to look and understood the language of the other realm.

“A knowing,” Sansa repeated, mesmerized in a new way at the man before her—her match, her love, her everything.

He closed his eyes and nodded. “I guess it was like dividing and conquering. We had things to do.”

“You got some tasks, and I got others,” Sansa continued as ceaseless understanding flowed between them with more life than the living could ever dream of; a brilliant burst of color and effervescent in its splendor. She wrapped her arms around his neck with the growing desire to have him nearer, as close as she could, and even that hardly seemed enough.

“And now our work is done,” Sandor remarked, and shed all the sorrow he’d held within.

The joy shone through, first behind his eyes and dazzling in his smile. He warmed beneath her and Sansa beamed as well with laughter bubbling up within and bursting through her lips. Sandor seemed to savor the sound, and he released a contented sigh as if expelling an eternity worth of heartache. Sansa felt the lightness in her too. All that pain drifted away and left only them behind. He took her hand and stared at the connection of their fingers interlaced together.

“Is this…are we in heaven?” Sansa asked, though the question seemed silly now; a mortal artifact that held no power here.

All those souls toiled for Providence and here she was—Sandor the only God she needed. Her salvation was through him and his through her. Their unity was the divine and their current existence a cosmic gift, not earned through moral deeds or withheld because of sin. It was written from the beginning that it should be this way, a celestial covenant that they be together as one. In every lifetime, every iteration, every story, they were meant for this moment; reunited in rest and the promise of eternity.

Sandor rolled on top of her, and Sansa wrapped her legs around him. Her nightgown fell to her hips. Sandor smoothed his palms along her legs; starting at her calves, over her knees, and down her thighs.

“We’re together aren’t we?” he murmured, a prelude to a sensuous kiss, as deep and consuming as it was tender and heartfelt. His hand dipped beneath her nightgown and grasped her bare waist. “It’s not a place, so much as a togetherness. A state of being brought back to where we belong.”

“With each other,” Sansa muttered against his mouth and buried her fingers in his hair as she cradled his head, her palms soft against his temples.

He nodded and sat up. Sansa followed and lifted her arms. With his eyes matched to hers, he pulled her nightgown over her head and discarded it in the quiet void beyond the bed. The heat between them dispelled the night’s chill. Her bare breasts heaved with erratic breath, the anticipation at having him near.

Sandor drew her underwear down her thighs and Sansa watched him shed his clothes and remembered now the battle scars against his skin—across his bicep, one along his chest, another at his side. They each had a story, and she knew them all, not by his own mouth but by the connection they shared and the knowledge that existed in unity between them.

Gripping his shoulders, Sansa fixed her eyes to his and crawled onto his lap, easing down along his manhood as she took him inside. She closed her eyes at the sensation and a shuddering breath escaped her. Much like the night before, they luxuriated in the simplicity of their oneness—his body pressed against her and the tenderness of the kiss she gave and how she held him close, skin against skin and heart beating against heart. Sandor’s hand slipped into hers. He beamed with a peaceful smile, besotted with happiness. She returned it and lifted her fingers to trace his lips.

“I remember this smile,” she recollected with gentle laughter running like a river through her words. Sandor kissed her fingertips and the smile grew and with it the light that encased them, blotting out the darkness.

As he slowly thrust and Sansa rolled her hips to meet the movement, it seemed natural that this was the last act in whatever space they’d been existing in. Sansa venerated all she could of him. She marveled at the strength of his body as her arms snaked around his shoulders. She reveled in the taste of him with every feverish kiss. Her mouth captured each of his panting breaths that were lost amongst her own.

With each movement—the way they rocked together, his hands cupping her cheek or roaming her body, the way their lips met—Sansa didn’t know anymore where she ended, and he began. She understood now that the sanctity of lovemaking was the mortal way of mirroring the divine; homage to the mingling of souls and the oneness it brings. Warmth spread between them, starting between her thighs, rising through her core, chest, throat and head and with it came light; so much resplendent light.

Other memories came in flashes. Ancient was their love; eons of time they’d existed together, bound and fated to never part from the moment they’d been placed on the earth. Her heart loved, ached, bled, and triumphed for him and his for her; forever for just them two, immortalized in songs sang and stories shared. Others knew their tale.

“I’ve loved you for so many lifetimes,” Sansa whispered to him. “In every one, my heart has belonged to you alone.”

Sandor kissed her cheek before nuzzling the tip of his nose against hers.

“And I’ve loved you just as long,” he exhaled against her mouth and thrust deeper into her, drawing her near, his face buried in the side of her neck and his lips trailing along her jaw and up her cheek.

Theirs wasn’t a story of only sadness and loss. Bright memories flashed in blues and glimmered in iridescence behind Sansa’s eyes—their wedding night and the love made by candlelight; the sound of his laughter and the vibration against her skin; the warmth of the home they’d made. The sorrow, the joy, the bitterness, the love—it was still their story.

The pleasure derived from their love dwarfed that of the physical because theirs wasn’t a union of bodies now. The release they shared with one another on gasps and pants, consuming kisses and tender touches, was one of spirit. When the ecstasy passed, Sandor slowed his movements and gazed at her. Sansa matched his eyes. Her fingers combed through his hair and down his back. Her legs wrapped tighter around his hips. When she lifted her hand to cup his cheek, he turned with eyes gently shut and kissed her palm.

They remained joined together in an embrace; his arms cradling her back and hers wrapped around his neck. Cheek to cheek, they relished in the connection and their breaths evenly matched; so too was their heartbeat, one strong, united rhythm. _We’re one._

The light from the hall spilled into the room like a dense fog, a brilliant green that no longer frightened her. It lofted around the bed and softened their surroundings that faded back into the mortal realm. When she pulled away enough to look at him, the ghost of a smile graced Sandor’s lips. Sansa rested her forehead against his. Where they both might’ve feared the divide before, it held more promise than horror now, more serenity than turmoil.

“It’s time. Are you ready, little bird?”

Sansa looked upon him once more and cradled his cheeks in her palms. She drew a deep breath and nodded.

“Eternity is ours. Don’t be scared,” he whispered against her lips where he placed a sweet kiss. Sansa closed her eyes and held onto him.

The black behind her eyes yielded to a flash of emerald light. The embrace of ethereal sleep replaced his arms around her, and the warmth against her form felt like the gentle caress of the sun. Sansa felt the heat of it at her eyelids and the black lit up again in that same vermillion and rust. She dared not open her eyes. _Please don’t let this be another false awakening. Please._

Something shifted next to her, another presence; separate but a part of her; different but the same; a paradox she fully understood, the mystery revealed in effortless simplicity.

“It’s not a false awakening, my love.” His voice rumbled against her, buoyant on a quiet chuckle, angelic to her ears. Sansa felt his hand slip into hers and his lips press against her cheek. “Open your eyes and see,” he whispered against her skin, such soothing warmth.

Sansa opened her eyes to an Elysian scene—a field of brilliant bluebells and flaxen grass that smelled as sweet as earth soaked in spring rain. She stared up at a vast sky, pristine and enchanting, a vibrant blue, and the ground beneath her was soft and warm. With a tuft of meadow grass cradling her head, Sansa turned to Sandor next to her, clothed as he had been on their wedding day in light linens and the smile he gave the same as it had been then. Only now, his scars were gone, all mortal wounds healed, both their outward presence and the pain that ran beneath; his soul unmarred.

Sansa rolled to him, beaming with a smile that lit up the sky, but he was looking at her; only at her. Sandor kissed her gently and took her hand. Sansa sat up and Sandor helped her to her feet. Her white dress shifted about her legs in the warm breeze. Sansa scanned the fields that swayed with an impossibly beautiful day, a forever of their choosing. They’d built it together in the life they once shared, not knowing then it was an echo, a promise from the heavens that they’d be brought back to it.

Sandor squeezed her hand and drew her eyes. She gazed up at him with joy she’d only ever known in fleeting moments in her life. With him, that happiness and peace existed in a ceaseless expanse, as vast as space and eternal as the time that ran through it.

Side-by-side and hand-in-hand, they walked together through the field of bluebells, the same ones in her hair, towards a tree that grew high. The stunning light that surrounded them lit up its leaves in brilliant emerald green. This was an existence of their own making—pain erased, only love and peace and eternal reunion triumphed; together as they were meant to be. Together as one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think why I have such an affinity for this story is because it strips away everything—intricate plot, other characters, diverse settings—and leaves behind the heart of what drew me to this pair in the first place and what has kept me here for years; the reason why I’m not a multi-shipper and I cannot imagine either of these characters belonging to another. 
> 
> Smut is fun, fluff is nice, angst is interesting, but it’s their soul connection that I find the most special and is the common thread I try to weave into all my stories. Most of the time I add it as an undercurrent, but this story allowed me to capture it in the truest sense, pull it front and center, and address it in a sincere and raw way. 
> 
> While I acknowledge the ending may be bittersweet for some, to me their end state here is the happiest ending I could ever want and write for them—eternal love and life together, free from pain and separation, reunited forever. They belong together. 
> 
> Big thanks to Littlefeather for graciously sharing her Lakota heritage and knowledge for a detail in this chapter!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it and sharing it with all you lovely souls!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed! This fic is finished, so I will post it throughout October.
> 
> Happy Spooky SanSan Season, my loves!


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